Apparently, the public has been made painfully aware that the moderators will not be fair in this election cycle. They were expecting another "Candy Crowley moment" of Democrat-assisting "fact checking" like we saw in the last election cycle. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey taken before the first debate found:
[A] plurality (46%) of likely U.S. voters believes most moderators will try to help Clinton in the upcoming debates. Only six percent (6%) think they will try to help Trump instead. Just 32% say most of the moderators will try to be unbiased, while 15% are undecided.
Seventy-eight percent (78%) of voters who support Trump think the moderators will try to help Clinton. Most Clinton supporters (56%) say the moderators will try to be unbiased, but 20% say they’ll try to help their candidate. Twelve percent (12%) of Clinton voters think the moderators will try to help Trump, compared to just two percent (2%) of Trump supporters who feel that way...
Half of Democrats (50%) think the moderators will try to be unbiased, but they are also nearly three times as likely to think the moderators will try to help Clinton more than Trump.
Four years ago, before the first Obama-Romney debate, 71 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of unaffiliated voters said debate moderators would be biased, but Democrats by a 47 percent to 30 percent margin felt they were not biased.
This builds on a recent Gallup poll that found “Republicans who say they have trust in the media has plummeted to 14% from 32% a year ago. This is easily the lowest confidence among Republicans in 20 years.”
