How Patch — And Others — Ended Up With Polls Showing Landslide Debate Win For Donald Trump

On Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump sent this tweet touting his apparent landslide win in Monday night's debate against Hillary Clinton.

Over here in Patch Land, our inclusion caught our eye. But it's hard to imagine readers of Patch, or most news sites, swinging so much in favor of one candidate, especially more so than readers of the far-right sites like Drudge Report or Breitbart News (whose executive chairman is now the CEO of Trump's campaign).

So what's really going on here?

It should seem obvious, but we'll say it anyway: Online polls such as the ones Trump promoted are in no way scientific and are not a reflection of the voting population at large. People can vote in these multiple times, across different devices. People from anywhere — New York, Alabama, Russia, China, the moon (once we set up that base) — can go to any website and cast a vote for their candidate with no barrier to entry.

It's not exactly a replica of the American voting system, which has strict requirements on registration, where to vote and how the votes determine who wins. Nor should it be likened to the work performed by real poll-takers, whose efforts are rooted in rigorous statistical methods and often are accurate within a percentage point or two.

Post-debate polling that had any sort of method to its madness told a different story.

A poll from CNN and ORC of debate-watchers had Clinton winning 62 percent to 27 percent, a similar margin, CNN noted, that Mitt Romney enjoyed over Barack Obama after their first debate four years ago. Although the survey, in a rush to poll debate-watchers, skewed slightly Democrat — a limitation CNN was clear about — Clinton won over independents and voters who said the debate changed their mind.

The political analytics website FiveThirtyEight noted that the CNN/ORC post debate polls have, historically, correlated to shifts in post-debate polling.

Conservative pollster Frank Luntz found a similar break in his focus group of voters from the crucial state of Pennsylvania, 16 of whom favored Clinton and six Trump.

Conversely, the online polling system is one that can be gamed pretty easily, and we got an up-close view of that in action Monday night.

Take our post as an example. Patch's Tim Darnell, in Atlanta, wrote up a debate recap that included a simple poll asking, "So who won the first presidential debate?"

Meanwhile, users on the Reddit page /r/The_Donald — a page of hundreds of thousands of Trump's most fervent fans, who share conspiracy theories, Trump talking points and offensive memes — posted links to online polls from news outlets across the country.

That post has since been deleted, but Patch was included. We know, because we saw a jolt of traffic once we were added. And all of those people were voting for Trump. Hence, the landslide.

Many of the other polls Trump tweeted screenshots of were included in the Reddit post. It makes sense that they, too, were all runaway wins for Trump.

So, thank you for the shoutout, Mr. Trump, but it was nothing. Really, it was nothing.

The reverse was in action last night, too.

Alex Jones — the radio host and conspiracy theorist who has called the Sandy Hook shootings a hoax and said Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered, among many, many other things — tweeted a poll of his own.

Jones, who has had Trump as a guest on his show and regularly goes on unhinged rants against Clinton, tweeted, simply, "Who won the first presidential debate? #TrumpVsHillary #Debates2016"

That poll was picked up by far-left types, who rallied liberals to vote in Clinton's favor on his poll.

As of press time, Jones' poll showed that Clinton had beaten Trump soundly in the debate, 59 to 41 percent.