Ted Cruz Supporter Cheats on Drudge Polls? ‘Cruzbot’ Hacks Polls to Boost Cruz’s Numbers Over Trump
After the GOP Debate ended, Drudge Report opened up its polls to get the consensus on who people think won the 12th Republican Debate. However, it has been reported that the poll was hacked and the numbers on Senator Ted Cruz were just generated by a bot.
The complaint was first submitted on Reddit, where a user posted a screenshot photo of the alleged incident. The photo showed a filtered result for users in Delaware. The report allegedly had more than 44,000 users in favor of Ted Cruz, while only 140 users voted for Donald Trump. Overall, 99.65 percent users supposedly voted for Ted Cruz.
After Donald Trump’s supporters noticed the glitch, they found out the culprit who probably was the one responsible for the poll hacking. A user under the name basedcruzmissile wrote: “He likes to boast about it so much, I decided to take on my own hands the task to make Drumpf lose. Help is appreciated it [sic], but I already reduced the gap from 20,000 votes to almost zero. I’ll leave this little thing I wrote running all night. Cruz got this. Just watch.”
It was not too long until another user figured out what the hacker had done. According to another user, the hacker used a script that was posted on Pastebin.
When the error was found, Drudge Report reportedly paused the polls. With the new numbers up on the site, it appears that they have solved the issue. The current polls have almost 134,000 votes for Donald Trump and about 43,000 votes for Ted Cruz. Since the numbers for Ted Cruz appeared to be very similar to the hacked statistics, it is possible that they were not able to remove the hacker’s bot votes.
Ted Cruz Supporters: Only Way To Win?
Because of this desperate move, Ted Cruz’s supporters were called out.
“Only way Cruz and his supporters like/want to win anything, is by cheating, and lying. Patriots they think,” wrote a TrumpofGod user.
Some say this directly reflects the values of Senator Ted Cruz.
“Cruz is a cheater, you didn’t think his followers would be too?” another user added.
As the debates get more and more challenging, most political analysts say that the only formidable Republican candidate to battle Donald Trump is Ted Cruz.
“It’s become a two person race in Iowa, because Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Chris Christie and Jeb Bush have failed to do what’s necessary to compete there with Trump, Cruz, and the rest of the field,” said Craig Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican. “Their half-hearted approach will leave them personally disappointed and in risk of being unable to right the ship.”
USA Today also reported that Ted Cruz is running second to Donald Trump in the rankings. According to FiveThirtyEight, Ted Cruz has strong numbers in the exit polls in Mississippi and Michigan. Seventy-five percent of Rubio’s voters noted that they will be supporting a possible Trump-Cruz duo, and 80 percent of those are in favor of Ted Cruz over Donald Trump.
Additionally, in terms of delegate support, Cruz tentatively has 558 delegates, while Trump has 444. Still, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight sees the possibility of Ted Cruz going head to head with Donald Trump.
This might sound too optimistic for Cruz, and certainly there are things a method like this can’t account for. But keep in mind that Cruz is doing most of the work himself — he hasn’t trailed Trump by all that much in the states that have voted. So giving him even some of the Rubio and Kasich voters is enough to put him over the top in several states that he narrowly lost.
[Photo Credit: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee]
