Polls

“Wow, did great in the debate polls (except for @CNN – which I don’t watch). Thank you!” – 27 September, Twitter

“We won every poll. Virtually every poll.” – 27 September, Melbourne, Florida

Trump did not win the post-debate polls. Trump seized on 11 online surveys, many of which allow people to vote many times, none of which vet respondents, and none of which weigh results according to actual voting demographics.

Two of the online surveys Trump cited on Tuesday came from the Drudge Report, which excoriated his main primary rival almost daily this spring, and Breitbart News, whose executive chairman is Trump’s campaign chief executive. None of the 11 polls screened respondents or were predictive or representative of voters. It is therefore impossible to have any idea where those respondents are coming from, who they are, or whether they might be bots.

On Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning, Trump also said: “I won CBS.” There was no post-debate CBS poll.

Pollsters with more scruples heard Americans say that Trump lost the debate. A quick CNN poll – although imperfect – showed 62% of voters thought Clinton won versus 27% for Trump. A Politico/Morning Consult poll showed 49% for Clinton versus 26% for Trump. An Echelon Insights poll showed 48% of registered voters thought Clinton won and 22% believed Trump had won. The closest result was a survey by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning pollster: 51% for Clinton to 40% for Trump.

Although these polls are hardly flawless, social media surveys do not compare. Trump did perform well in one poll, by LA Times/USC, which gave him a four-point lead. As a tracking poll, it did not ask about the debate.

And although Trump claims not to watch CNN, this month alone he has tweeted commentary about its programming nine times, including three embedded videos (each of himself).

“A new post-debate poll that just came out, the Google poll has us leading Hillary Clinton by two points nationwide and that’s despite the fact that Google’s search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton. How about that?” – 28 September, interview with Fox News

Trump is apparently referring to a poll by Independent Journal Review-Google Consumer Surveys poll – which said he lost the debate – and to a discredited conspiracy theory first propagated by the site SourceFed, which argued in June that Google’s autocomplete tool ought to turn up “Hillary Clinton criminal” when prompted by “Hillary Clinton cr”, because Google Trends shows an interest in this phrase and other search engines, Bing and Yahoo, do show “criminal”.

As Rhea Drysdale, an executive at a search engine optimization firm, explained in June, SourceFed appears to have misunderstood Google’s algorithm. Autocomplete does not directly reflect what is popular on Google Trends, meaning it does not behave like Facebook’s trending news box, which promotes popular stories whether they are real, hoaxes, satire or conspiracy theories.

SourceFed employees also appear not to have applied their random-letter-bias test to Trump. Typing “Donald Trump cr” turns up “crying”, “Crimea”, “crowds” and “crooked Hillary”.

“Donald Trump in” turns up “India” and “Instagram”, with the same results for Clinton.

In June, when the conspiracy theory first surfaced, a Google spokesman told CNN: “Our autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name.

“Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how autocomplete works.”

Boeing and Ford

“See that plane? That plane was built in America. Now that same company is going to start building these planes in China. I don’t like it.” – 27 September, Melbourne, Florida

Boeing no longer makes 757 models like Trump’s private plane, an ageing aircraft he bought used. Boeing is building an assembly center, not technically a factory, in China. The company’s CEO, Ray Conner, has directly contradicted Trump’s accusation that it will outsource manufacturing.

The deal “will also create more jobs here”, Conner told the Seattle Times. “It’s lopsided on what we get and give – we get more. It’s being portrayed as the opposite.”

Conner also defended the plant last year, before Trump began criticizing it. Boeing 737s will be built in Washington state, he said, and then flown to China for interior assembly. The company also put out a statement saying it had opened a $1bn facility in Everett, Washington, and expanded its Seattle delivery center.

“Ford is leaving, thousands of jobs leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio. They are all leaving.” – 26 September, Hempstead, New York

Like Connor, Ford chief executive Mark Fields took the unusual step for a businessman of dipping into politics to reject Trump’s claim.

“It’s really sometimes disappointing when politics gets in the way of facts,” he told a Bloomberg Market summit on Wednesday.

“What we announced is that we will be moving our small car out of our Michigan facility down to Mexico. But we’re going to be replacing that with two other vehicles. So the facts are zero jobs will be impacted here in the United States.” Referring to the union of autoworkers, Fielda added: “And this is an agreement that we have with the UAW.”

He also said, correctly, that the car company ranks highest for vehicle factory jobs in the US, at least as of last year.

Fields may have understated the initial impact of the Mexico plant, but he is correct that Ford has struck a deal to invest $9bn in US plants, creating 8,500 jobs in the UAW and building Mustangs, Lincolns and Tauruses in the midwest.

Catching up with Clinton

“He’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” – 26 September, Hempstead, New York

None of the actual tax returns Clinton alluded to during Monday’s debate are public, but a 1981 report to New Jersey’s casino control commission, which reviewed Trump’s taxes from 1975 to 1979, shows that he paid federal income taxes for three of those five years. He did not pay taxes in two of those five years because he lost more money, $3.8m, than he made.

“When I became secretary of state, Iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb.” – 26 September, Hempstead, New York

Clinton appears to be exaggerating how quickly Iran could have developed a bomb. During negotiations, intelligence officials and analysts said they believed Iran was two to three months away from bomb capabilities. The terms of the deal extend that “breakout” ability to a year, and have restrictions extending over 10, 15 and 25 years.

“What I have proposed would not add a penny to the debt.” – 26 September, Hempstead, New York

Clinton’s proposed tax plan would add $191bn to the debt over the long term, according to the Tax Foundation, a conservative thinktank. The Tax Policy Center, however, estimates that she would add $1.1tn in revenue in a decade, though much of that would be offset by increased spending. The Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s plan would add $5.3tn to the debt.