Political site Daily Kos drops bombshell about why it dropped polling firm
This is a must-read story for political junkies and anyone who just flat-out doesn’t trust opinion polls. … In fact, it’s an even more important read for those who do trust opinion polls.
The liberal political blog Daily Kos hours ago alleged in a post that it has been the victim of a fraud perpetrated by the polling firm Research 2000 (R2K). In essence, a trio of researchers has shown that poll results produced by R2K could not have been achieved through a random selection of respondents. From that post by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas:
I want to feel stupid for being defrauded, but fact is Research 2000 had a good reputation in political circles. Among its clients the last two years have been KCCI-TV in Iowa, WCAX-TV in Vermont, WISC-TV in Wisconsin, WKYT-TV in Kentucky, Lee Enterprises, the Concord Monitor, The Florida Times-Union, WSBT-TV/WISH-TV/WANE-TV in Indiana, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Bergen Record, and the Reno Gazette-Journal. In fact, just last week, in an email debate about robo-pollsters, I had a senior editor at a top DC-based political publication tell me that he’d “obviously” trust Research 2000 more than any automated pollsters, such as SurveyUSA. I didn’t trust Research 2000 more than I trusted SUSA (given their solid track record), but I did trust them. I got burned, and got burned bad.
You can read the report from the three researchers here.
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It’s damning stuff, at least to my layman’s reading, which Moulitsas says R2K has failed to explain despite repeated requests.
Says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, another left-of-center political blog that has included R2K data in its polling roundups:
To say that this is a bombshell in the polling and politics geek world is no overstatement. And remember, R2K didn’t start out as Kos’s pollster. They’ve been around for some time and had developed a pretty solid reputation.
Right now that reputation is in need of some mighty damage control.
(Update: R2K president tells TPM: “I have much to say, however, I am following my attorney Richard Beckler’ ESQ’s counsel and referring all questions to him. I will tell you unequivocally that we conducted EVERY poll properly for the Daily Kos.”)
(Update 2: The Washington Post talks to the lawyer for Daily Kos about its promised lawsuit against R2K.)
(Update 3: TPM pulls R2K data off of its site.)
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