The North American Spanish television network Telemundo took to Twitter to ask users how they felt about the first presidential debate. An online flash poll on Twitter is anonymous so there’s no way to gather demographics of participants. The poll isn’t scientific or an accurate representation of what the Latine community thought about the debate.
The Twitter poll had less than 10,000 votes, with 68.7% of the 9,414 respondents believe that Trump won the first presidential debate. Telemundo shared the results on-air and stated they were from a Twitter poll, but it’s clear that some Republican politicians, figures, and many news outlets are using the poll’s results as factual evidence that Trump has secured the Latine vote.
Reputable news outlets such as Newsweek have been quick to cover the poll’s result and claim that it’s a representative of Spanish-speaking Americans. Yet, there’s no way to confirm that the poll takers were Spanish-speakers. Anyone in the world could have participated in the poll—including MAGA trolls.
Spreading this rhetoric is dangerous as the fake poll was not conducted ethically and may influence Latine voters. Earlier this month former Vice President Joe Biden was leading President Donald Trump by 62% to 26% among Latine registered voters nationally according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll.
Twitter users sounded off about the social media poll’s results.
@SHICEMASTER: Telemundo got trump leading in the polls. That’s a lie from #foxnews
@matthewjdowd: Cspan and telemundo weren’t polls. They were self-selected. CBS and CNN actually did polls. Trump lost both.
@musicaamazigh: Sounds like they only polled the Cuban exile community.
@LoveMyBeyonce: #Telemundo naaaah the #ILLEGITIMATEpresident supporters are working HARD to mislead the American people. No way are Latinos ok with trump’s HATE for them. Ain’t no way they’re that STUPID #Debates2020 #VoteBlueToEndThisNightmare