Polls and pundits agree: Clinton beat Sanders in debate
WASHINGTON — In the hours immediately after Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, media analysts and party strategists quickly declared Hillary Rodham Clinton the winner.
Not so fast, said supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Focus groups convened by CNN and Fox News had preferred Sanders. So did respondents to several nonscientific online surveys. The pundits were out of touch with the voters, some Sanders backers complained.
But with results now coming in from reliable polls, it looks like the pundits were right.
So far, at least three surveys that meet standards for meaningful public opinion research — one conducted by telephone and two online — have reported their results. All found that a majority of Democrats polled thought Clinton was the winner.
In a phone survey by Gravis Marketing, registered Democrats chose Clinton over Sanders as the debate winner, 62% to 30%. An online YouGov survey for the Huffington Post had a similar result, 55% to 22%. And a poll for NBC by Survey Monkey had Clinton as the winner, 56% to 33%.
More important, the NBC survey showed Clinton gaining slightly as the favored candidate, largely at the expense of Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to make an announcement soon about whether he’ll run.
More polls will deliver additional data over the next week, but the evidence to date all points in the same direction: Clinton had a strong debate that has helped her consolidate her position as front-runner and has made a run by Biden more of a long shot.