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posted by cmn32480 on Monday December 14 2015, @12:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the corporate-agendas dept.

The Inquisitr reports:

On [December 7], Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders won the readers' poll for TIME's Person of the Year, which was conducted online.

The 74-year-old Senator won by [a] landslide, beating out other world-renowned leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and even U.S. President Barack Obama.

[...] Bernie Sanders won [with] more than 10 percent of the total online votes, while his closest contender, Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist that fights for the education rights of girls in her country, only got 5.2 percent of the votes.

Aside from beating the U.S. president in the online poll, Bernie Sanders also overran his toughest competitors: Donald Trump (1.8%) and Hillary Clinton (1.4%).

[...] No U.S. presidential candidate has ever won the Person of the Year award prior to the results of the election. However, the fact that Sanders topped the poll is testament that there are still people who will choose to go for someone with whom they share similar views as opposed to someone who is "popular". [Submitter's quote marks; see "Nate Silver", below]

But while Sanders' cause may be noble, which is mostly likely why he earned the top spot in the Person of the Year online poll, it wasn't enough for him to take home the prize. Reportedly, Sanders' name was taken out of the short list from which the editors of TIME [were] supposed to make their choice for Person of the Year.

[...] TIME released the names of the eight finalists for the annual award on [December 8] [...] Sanders and his runner-up Yousafzai were not included in the list of finalists. The finalists included Putin, Trump, Rouhani, former Olympian and transgender Caitlyn Jenner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Black Lives Matter activists, and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of jihadist group Islamic State.

On [December 9], TIME announced the winner during NBC's Today show. Angela Merkel was the unanimous choice of the TIME editors, making her the second individual woman to ever win the award.

The editors second choice was Trump.

This complete disregard for the readers' poll is hardly unprecendented, as demonstrated by the results from 2006:
Hugo Chavez wins "Person of the Year" poll; Time magazine ignores result

Unsurprising to many, AlterNet reports that Trump's presence in corporate media's coverage of the presidential contest is wildly disproportionate to his acceptance by USAian voters.

Trump's true level of support, [according to phenomenally accurate pollster Nate Silver, is] 6 percent to 8 percent of the electorate--or roughly "the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked", the pollster said.

Previous: Bernie Sanders Leads TIME Magazine's Person of the Year Readers' Poll


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @06:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @06:55AM (#276554)

    He's currently #2 in the running for the Democratic nomination. It's really unclear if he can pass Hillary, or how he would fare in the general. But, at this point, he's probably a more real candidate that Jeb Bush.