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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the stuffing-the-ballot-box dept.

You may be getting trolled right now without even knowing it.

Donald Trump supporters artificially manipulated the results of online polls to create a false narrative that the Republican nominee won the first presidential debate on Monday night.

The efforts originated from users of the pro-Trump Reddit community r/The_Donald and 4chan messaged boards, which bombarded around 70 polls, including those launched by Time, Fortune, and CNBC.

In this latest incarnation, multiple Reddit users enlisted the Trump-supporting masses on r/The_Donald, which has over 200,000 subscribers, by posting dozens of online polls that are vulnerable to vote brigading, bots, and other forms of manipulation that make these non-scientific surveys notoriously unreliable.

Polls that were not open to public voting consistently put Clinton ahead of Trump. In a flash poll by Public Policy Polling, Clinton led Trump 51 to 40. A CNN/ORC poll conducted immediately following the debate found significantly stronger support for Clinton, who topped Trump 62 to 27.

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-polls-4chan-the-donald/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:06PM (#407424)

    > Though, it is the act of mindlessly voting for the perceived 'lesser evil' that got us into this situation in the first place.

    Actually, its the act of mindlessly assuming there is such a thing as pure good that got us into this situation in the first place. All politics is compromise. You pick what matters most to you and focus on what you can actually achieve. Anything else is a fatalism that plays right into the hands of the people who want to make sure they get the most and you get the least. Stop letting your vote be determined by grade-school logic.