I think Bernie Sanders performed better than Hillary Clinton on debate night, and most of the initial impressions of the debate (according to online surveys, focus groups, and interest generated in Twitter postings and Google searches) seemed to corroborate this view. Honestly, I thought it was a slam dunk for Sanders…for about an hour or so. And then the mainstream press opinions came out and declared Hillary Clinton the winner. Since then, I’ve been an onlooker (and occasional participant) as my position and my suspicions have been derided by several individuals, so I though it would be helpful to provide a central hub of my rebuttals to a few arguments against Sanders winning, as well as a few arguments I’ve heard from my side of things that I hesitate to fully endorse.

FOUR REASONS WHY I ARGUE SANDERS WON

1. Um…actually the question of who won does matter.

Their claim: It doesn’t matter who won the debate. What matters are the issues.

Rebuttal: In a way, this is true — it’s hard to define who won a debate and the proper measure to use is controversial. But at the same time, something else is also true — it matters a great deal who people think won the debate. Especially if there are people who are undecided or if a candidate many are unfamiliar with makes a strong impression. In addition to making an impacting on people’s voting decisions, this impression matters because these candidates’ presentations, like it or not, color how people view the issues they represent. I am losing track of the number of times my own strongly socialist views tend to be seen through Sanders’ own personality and representation, so this makes it important to me that he is perceived as presenting such views well.

2. Sanders supporters probably didn’t rig all the online polls, conspiracy theorists.

Their claim: Bernie Sanders supporters flooded online polls, making them unreliable.

Rebuttal: This objection would seem true if it were one or two polls, or polls on primarily liberal sites, or polls on prominent sites that liberals would hone in on — leaving the outlying sites clearly neglected. But Sanders won the debate in multiple polls across a wide spectrum of sites. And even then, the objector might have a point if the margins were close in one or two of them. Except he won those polls not by a little, but by a lot. And the conspiracy theory that so many Bernie Sanders supporters went to liberal AND conservative sites to cast ballots right after the debate seems a bit far-fetched on its face. Major sites like CNN? Sure. The conservative Drudge Report poll? Less likely. And if you say that the conservatives on that site voted for Bernie Sanders because they favored him, you’re even more in the woods, because most of them know now that Sanders is pretty far to the left of Hillary, what with him claiming to be a socialist and all. As Adam Johnson from Alternet puts it:

The collection of such a wide range of polls, and the consistently wide margins, are, together, powerful evidence that this was not a fluke.

3. Folks, it wasn’t just one focus group. It was three, and they didn’t conspire.

Their claim: A random focus group’s opinion is not enough evidence.

Rebuttal: This is absolutely true. One focus group (a group of hand-picked people meant to represent a group of voters) isn’t convincing on its own, as Slate writer Amanda Marcotte notes:

And if you think focus groups are somehow going to give you “objective” information, consider that Trump lost the GOP debate in the Fox News focus group. Didn’t seem to do squat when it came to his poll numbers, though.

Again, this is true. And she’d have a point…if that was the only focus group.

But there wasn’t just one focus group. There were at least three. Again, as Johnson put it:

It isn’t just that he won the results of one focus group. It was that he won according to the results of every focus group that’s remotely significant.

If there was a focus group he did poorly in — any focus group at all — that would add considerable doubt into the mix.

But the theory that all three groups somehow conspired to say that Sanders won when he clearly didn’t seems fairly strange on its face.

4. Bernie gave the issues some of the passion they deserved, and people saw it.

Their claim: Bernie Sanders came across as a crazy, screaming old man. Hillary Clinton came across as more collected, so she won.

Rebuttal: Well, that depends on your perception. Several people (see above discussion, especially the focus group polls) saw Bernie Sanders as passionate and Hillary Clinton as an opportunist trying to match Sanders’ passion without necessarily succeeding. I mean, you need to be passionate to carry on a consistent 50-year fight for Civil Rights without wavering. Those who think Sanders won thinks he showed his longstanding firmness on Civil Rights with the enthusiasm it deserved, and see Clinton as more muted. It’s in the perception.

But I will say this, personally: When I see a “moderate” imply Sanders should “calm down” about important issues we all have reason to be passionate about, I have a tendency to think that they do not have nearly the proper respect for the plight of this country’s marginalized and struggling.

WHY I’M CAREFUL ABOUT A FEW ARGUMENTS FROM MY SIDE

Common argument #1: It is definitely true that Time Warner is trying to deceptively make it look like Hillary Clinton won, since they are major contributors to her campaign.

Why I’m cautious: The theory looks promising, at first. Time Warner (the company that owns CNN and Time, two major outlets proclaiming Hillary’s win in spite of Internet polls to the contrary) is the seventh largest donor (according to the best information we have) to Clinton’s campaign efforts. They are not a major donor to Bernie Sanders’ campaign (correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t found evidence that they contributed a cent). The thought here, from several people, is that Time Warner intentionally framed Clinton as the winner of the debate, although they know Sanders actually won.

There is a very small chance that this is true, but it’s not large and won’t translate to a believable argument, for a few reasons. First, many CNN reporters are biased towards Hillary anyway, for free and without there having to be a big conspiracy involved (like, currently, the largest slice of the Democratic party). Remember — Clinton has run for President before, and CNN probably wanted to ensure it had access to her in case she became President — the donations could have been, in part, because they were concerned about accessing a promising front runner (although they were also probably because…well, read this). And the media likely has a much stronger natural relationship to Clinton due to that previous run (not to mention, of course, its relationship with her husband and her prominence as Secretary of State).

Second, it’s possible not to be biased towards Hillary and still think she clearly won. If you’re the reigning champ in the boxing ring, whoever goes against you has to do significantly better than you, oftentimes, for you to lose your belt. Not because the judges are a fan of the reigning champ, but because the reigning champ has a reputation of winning. Clinton is the favorite, she has the reputation, and her halo is, frankly, blinding. It is highly likely that even if you don’t like Hillary, her status as the frontrunner and the presumption that she’ll win gives her an inherent advantage that it is difficult for Sanders to overcome. So Sanders may have performed better in the debate, which would naturally lead to an out-the-gate reaction that Sanders won. But if you put that debate in the context of Hillary being the assumed frontrunner who has campaigned before, as many journalists (and, mistakingly, much of the population) does, Clinton acquires a head start based on her reputation.

Third, like it or not, the mainstream media forms opinion. So many people will agree with the mainstream media to save themselves embarrassment — so that even someone who initially thinks Sanders won will be swayed by the media and say they think Clinton did a better job to keep from having an out-of-mainstream and potentially embarrassing opinion (which, I think, is problematic, but it is what it is).

For these three reasons, I think insisting that this was definitely a conspiracy on the part of Time Warner is unwise. I’m not saying for sure that it didn’t happen, and I think that presenting the suspicious evidence is important, but I don’t think certainty should be attached to that opinion. Just my view.

Common argument #2: Bernie Sanders got more Twitter followers from the debate, so he definitely won.

Why I’m cautious: My opponent might bring up the point that Bernie Sanders brought the hashtag #DebateWithBernie just before the debate, which ensured that this hashtag would be at the top of “trending topics” on smartphones during the debate, and also gave the campaign authority to control what you saw when you searched for the hashtage #DebateWithBernie. Looking at this objectively, it seems likely that this decision significantly impacted the Twitter activity during the debate.

But, at the same time…in addition to the previous evidence, he not only did well on Twitter…he did VERY well on Twitter, in a way that would be challenging to explain based on the Twitter purchase alone. He got 306,000 tweets to Sanders’s 128,000 tweets, and many of them used the hashtags #cnndebate and #demdebate — Sanders far outpaced Clinton here. And it seems that this was a good thing (as opposed to indicative of how many people were complaining about Sanders), as Sanders also gained 35,163 new followers to Clinton’s 13,252.

There is strong evidence that Twitter is an indication Bernie Sanders won, but because of the brought hashtag, this evidence doesn’t seem as strong as earlier mentioned items.

Common argument #3: Searches on Google for Bernie Sanders skyrocketed, so he clearly won.

Why I’m cautious: It’s true that Google searches for Bernie Sander absolutely skyrocketed during the debate. But was it about how good he was, or how bad? There seems to be no indications here either way. So I tend to be careful here.

At the same time, as Sanders is not the frontrunner and has not been quite as scrutinized as Clinton, the fact that many more people are searching for him than for Clinton probably helps him more than hurts him – his followers are probably already largely committed, and those who aren’t his followers seem to be looking into possibilities, arguably.

IN CLOSING…

I think, as I said at the beginning, that Bernie Sanders clearly won the debate. So I remain perplexed at what seems to clearly be the flawed insistence that Hillary won. At the same time, after some thought, conversations with several of my peers, and some research, I think many people currently see Hillary as a winner partly because she’s been seen as the assumed frontrunner for 2016 about since Obama beat her since 2008, and partly because the mainstream media has fairly consistently painted her as the winner.

Bernie Sanders, I think, communicated with the fire and passion the issues he discussed deserved, and he showed a strong, long-lasting consistency and determination to enact desperately needed reforms that seemed to dwarf Hillary Clinton’s more moderate (and, I would argue, politically opportunistic) approach. I suspect, based on the evidence and my own watching of the debate, that initial reactions that did not think of Clinton as the assumed frontrunner (and many initial reactions from those who did) correctly saw Sanders as giving a much stronger performance. It is unfortunate that this view is, for whatever reason, being disregarded by most current opinions from mainstream media.