What Went Down At The Vice Presidential Debate

So let’s try to get in front of this ridiculous narrative this time: Opt-in, vote-as-many-times-as-you-want, unscientific online polls -- aka "clickers”; my colleagues on the FiveThirtyEight Elections podcast are looking for a better name -- are meaningless. After last Monday's debate, Trump tweeted that it was "such a great honor" to have won 12 of these "polls.” And Trump fans looking to stuff the ballot for Pence tonight might have taken that tweet as a cue to head to the same sites. Pence was the winner according to 76 percent of clickers on Fox 5 San Diego a few minutes after the debate, 73 percent at Heavy.com and 97 percent (of just 65 clickers) at PolitOpinion. Expect to hear far more about these results than they merit in the hours and days to come. More scientific polls about who won will also emerge, though as my colleague Harry Enten wrote earlier tonight, those results aren’t likely to have much effect on the polls that really matter: whom people plan to vote for on Election Day.