I’ve been scoffing at the results of the Research 2000 polls commissioned by Markos Moulitsas over at Daily Kos for a long while, but this turn of events is pretty shocking:
I have just published a report by three statistics wizards showing, quite convincingly, that the weekly Research 2000 State of the Nation poll we ran the past year and a half was likely bunk.
We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it’s clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don’t know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can’t trust it. Meanwhile, Research 2000 has refused to offer any explanation. Early in this process, I asked for and they offered to provide us with their raw data for independent analysis — which could potentially exculpate them. That was two weeks ago, and despite repeated promises to provide us that data, Research 2000 ultimately refused to do so. At one point, they claimed they couldn’t deliver them because their computers were down and they had to work out of a Kinkos office. Research 2000 was delivered a copy of the report early Monday morning, and though they quickly responded and promised a full response, once again the authors of the report heard nothing more.
While the investigation didn’t look at all of Research 2000 polling conducted for us, fact is I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else. I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we’ve written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling.
Even worse for Markos Moulitsas, he apparently was working on a book, entitled American Taliban, that relied heavily on a Research 2000 poll of American conservatives.
UPDATE: Markos declares via Twitter, “No premises in American Taliban depend exclusively on R2K polling.”
On his site, he elaborates, “Book was stripped of references to R2K, except in two instances where I couldn’t do so without affecting page count (too late for me to do that since the index was done), but those two examples also references other supporting polling, so my premise didn’t depend on the R2K results.”
Now we just need someone to do a similar analysis of Quinnipiac, whose results are typically even more wrong than the Research 2000 numbers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am not a fan of Daily Kos - very much the opposite. But I respect them a bit, now, for the way they handled this, once they were convinced the polls were trash. Got rid of the pollster, went public, dumped the poll results from their data base.
They sure were slow to catch on, though. Perhaps they should read The Campaign Spot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHA HA!
They were slow to catch on because they were to blinded by their hate of republican's.
And don't have much respect for them, as Jim has noted here in the past and other sites have noted, Daily Kos has a history of things conveniently disappearing from their website when they look like donkey's. Also, I have more repect for those at a place like Firedoglake for having political principles. Daily kos have no soul, they are just D yes men. Look at how they went after Olbermann because he didn't toe the line and carry obama's water one time.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh, just noticed that the Wash Post says markos is going to sue research 2000, so that explains some of the public bravado.
But I think that is BS too since I don't think Markos is stupid enough to go through discovery, R2k probably can protect their methods in polling so a suit would be very difficult. Plus the suit would get ugly and drag on for years and cost a bunch of money.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo premises in Kos' writing are based on fact, in other words! And here's the proof.
I would agree with Hoover that if you want to see halfway intelligent comments from the "Dem underground", Firedoglake is a much, much better site.
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