Overwhelmingly improbable? Oh man! What is that likelihood?
Please dont masquerade your opinions as facts by using terms like "likelihood" and "improbable".
I have one question for you. If media influence over elections is so "unlikely" and so insignificant why would the NYT have tripped over itself to retitle and reword their article to make it seem like pro-Bernie?
Media influence is real. You will quickly notice after speaking to people outside your bubble that the average voters political almost always conform to that of the "pundits".
Your example, the NYT, is quoted on TV and radio every single day, in and out of the US. Add to that the number of private who quote, forward, regurgitate-as-if-they-thought-of-it the articles.
The power of the mainstream media is waning, but it is still more significant than anything else, other parts of the Internet included, in swaying voters.
Most people don't know Bernie, Hillary and Donald personally, so the only way to get an impression is the media.
Just the lazy way.
By using... words?
The irony.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/03/15/ny-times-trumps-mamm...
Beyond that, the media coverage of Clinton and Trump are overwhelmingly negative. All I see on TV is "how to stop Trump" and "is Hillary a lying liar who lies?"
Primary election results do not support this theory. Clinton has very high favorability among self-declared Democrats, something like 70-80 % off the top of my head. Her favorability declines fast with Independents and Republican voters. I don't have the data in front of me but I could bet Sanders won independent vote in every primary where independents were allowed to vote, notably Michigan. Noone can't say if it's favorability only but correlation is hard to dispute.
Independent favorability: Sanders 50-39, Clinton 31-60 (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cdh1L0vXEAEokgY.jpg:large)
Worth noting that among independents, Clinton has a net -29 which is second worst only to Trump at -32, and is worse than Cruz at -27.
Political polling and surveys have a margin of error, and its generally pretty close to the mark.
Trump and Hillary have had by far and away the most advertising for their campaigns, and generally the ones with the biggest ad spends (which has in the past converted into the most advertising, but Trump has gotten enormous free advertising) win elections.
My conclusion is that there is no media conspiracy, they just like getting paid and both Trump and Hillary make that happen.
If Trump had the same advertising as he could afford I dont think he would have been in the same position he is in now.
And at the risk of stating the obvious, finding someone as more favorable than their opponent doesn't necessarily imply I will vote for them in an election.
Specious assumption. My conclusion is that the favorability ratings are bullshit.
To posit that a huge media conspiracy has caused millions of voters to vote huge, huge landslides in favor of these two people is just ridiculous compared with the probability that measuring very complex and ineffable metrics like "favorability" is a total crapshoot, especially in a world where voters like myself (and many HNers, I suspect) do not have landlines, use ad-blockers, do not click on advertising online and do not fill out surveys.
Tl;dr the likelihood of media influence controlling this election to such huge, huge landslide outcomes is overwhelmingly improbable compared to the high likelihood that favorability metrics are junk-science.