Daily Kos Suing Former Polling Partner
Markos Moulitsas gets a lesson in caveat emptor from his former pollster.
Markos Moulitsas announced today that he will be suing Research 2000, the polling firm that he had been partnered with up until only a few months ago:
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.
Since the moment Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman approached me, I took their concerns seriously and cooperated fully with their investigation. I also offered to run the results on Daily Kos provided that they 1) fully documented each claim in detail, 2) got that documentation peer reviewed by disinterested third parties, and 3) gave Research 2000 an opportunity to respond. By the end of last week, they had accomplished the first two items on that list. I held publication of the report until today, because I didn’t want to partake in a cliche Friday Bad News Dump. This is serious business, and I wasn’t going to bury it over a weekend.
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.
This announcement comes less than a month after Kos announced that it was ending it’s relationship with the polling company based, in part, on Nate Silver’s just-released pollster rankings, which didn’t give Research 2000 a very good review.
The report itself is fairly extensive and seems to suggest that Research 2000 was knowingly cooking the books on the numbers it was providing to clients, although I’ll admit that much of the statistical analysis discussion went over my head so that could be an incorrect interpretation. Although that seems to be exactly the fraud that Kos is referring to in his post when he says:
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.
There were many on the right who were skeptical of the Daily Kos/Research 2000 polling numbers simply because of the entity commissioning the polls. At it turns out, there was reason to be skeptical, but it had nothing to do with ideology.
“…there was reason to be skeptical, but it had nothing to do with ideology.”
I’d say ideology had a lot to do with it. Research 2000 knows Kos ideology and fabricated numbers that supported that ideology.
What’s that sound I hear? Sounds like a race to the courthouse.
Blow me down! Say it ain’t so. Next they’ll be telling me there is no Easter Bunny.
Hmm — When was the last time anyone on the right ever admitted he was wrong about anything? That he might have published inaccurate information?
Oh, that’s right. Never. When a “conservative” is wrong, it’s always the fault of the liberal media.
There is sooo much more to this story. Drip Drip Drip