After the October 11, 2011 Republican Presidential debate, Ron Paul took a 75% lead in the post-debate poll. Did he win? No, Allen Wastler , Managing Editor, CNBC.com, admitted that Ron Poll supporters “flooded” the server. He determined that the actions of a “few” strong Paul supporters distorted the poll; the poll was removed.

CNBC posted an internet poll after Wednesday’s debate, too. But it has been removed too. Again, CNBC alleges that Paul supporters have stuffed the poll with votes for their candidate. This time they did not name the candidate, instead, they decreed that the margin did not reflect the consistency of other polls.

“We had a poll up from our Republican Presidential Debate asking readers who they thought won,” Wastler wrote on the www.cnbc.com website. “ One candidate was leading by such a margin that it became obvious the polling wasn't so much a reading of our audience, but of the Internet prowess of this particular candidate's political organization. We have therefore taken the poll down.

“Yes, we've gone through this exercise before,” he concluded.

In the October statement, Wastler stated, “Paul is a fine gentleman with some substantial backing and, by the way, was a dynamic presence throughout the debate , but I haven't seen him pull those kind of numbers in any "legit" poll. Our poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign. So we took the poll down.

“The next day, our email basket was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion. Congratulations. You folks are obviously well-organized and feel strongly about your candidate and I can't help but admire that.

“But you also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest "show of hands" -- it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum."