Rumours are spreading that a poll conducted by Bill O’Reilly involving 25,000 people (250 people from each party in all 50 states) revealed that voters believed that Trump would win the election 86% to Clinton’s 14%, if it were held today.
While the poll is real, the claims about how it was conducted have been fabricated.
While many tweets and conservative websites have been claiming the poll was conducted by university graduate students calling 250 people from both parties in all 50 states, this is completely false.
Bill O’Reilly did his own poll of 25K ppl. He had University grad students call 250 people from each party’s voter rolls in all 50 states
Bill O’Reilly conducted the poll via his show (The O’Reilly Factor) website on October 11 2016, and people (anyone) would simply navigate to the site and vote. Since The O’Reilly Factor, a conservative show hosted on the Fox News Channel, has a largely conservative audience, the data any poll receives is likely to be heavily skewed. (Results can be seen here.)
Another “poll” graphic (below) claims that a general election poll revealed that Trump was 92% in front after asking 700,000 voters. However, as many people have likely concluded, this is simply false. The graphic has been digitally altered.
Given the increasingly polarized nature of American politics, any genuine poll that aims to contact voters from both sides of the political alley is unlikely to have any candidate polling at less than around 40% given that both parties core bases largely outnumber the amount of independent voters that will commonly swing a presidential election from one side to the other.
