August 9, 2015

Cruz, Fiorina Are Big Winners In First Post-Debate Poll

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A new NBC poll has gotten a lot of attention today for suggesting that Donald Trump won the Republican debate on Thursday. And maybe he did! But I’d take the results with a grain of salt. Here’s why:

  • As the chart on the right shows, Trump’s support didn’t increase. It stayed where it was. The big gainers were Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson.
  • It was an overnight poll. So it might reflect what viewers thought of the debate itself, but it doesn’t take account of the weekend fallout over Trump’s post-debate treatment of Megyn Kelly. Nor does it take into account the media treatment of Trump over the past few days. This may or may not make a difference, but I’d wait a few days to see how things play out.
  • It’s an internet poll, not a telephone poll. The methodology is fairly sound, but it’s nonetheless another reason to treat the results with caution.

I’m not foolish enough to predict what’s going to happen to Trump’s poll numbers over the next week. I feel safe saying that Trump will implode eventually, and that he’ll implode over something like this weekend’s lunacy. But whether it will happen over this weekend’s version of this weekend’s lunacy—well, who knows? The base of the Republican Party is pretty inscrutable to a mushy mainstream liberal like me. I’m really not sure what will and won’t set them off these days.

As for the rest of the results, I’m stumped over Ted Cruz’s gain. He didn’t seem to especially stand out on Thursday. Conversely, Fiorina is easy to understand, and Carson’s bump might just be due to increased name recognition. Bush and Walker dropped a little more than I would have guessed, but 3 percent still isn’t much. We’ll see if all these results hold up over the next week.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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