Palin's contortions to defend Rush's use of the word 'r****d' while bashing Rahm for the exact same thing are a pretty good indication Levi was telling the truth.
its very similar to the whole letterman thing - she and her supporters went on the warpath over his joke, but seth myers from snl makes an incest joke about the palins and not only does sarah p. not comment on it, she actually goes on snl the next week and does a bit on the news (w/ seth myers).
Earlier in this thread I said that I could find no reason to doubt the results of this poll, and I and several others asked the folks grasping at straws to give a reason why the results might not be valid (other than "I know some Republicans who aren't like this"). I don't think we got any real responses. But today I read the blog post below from fivethirtyeight.com, which came up with a plausible explanation and some evidence that puts the severity of this poll's findings into some doubt. So I figured it was only fair to post it. [rquoter]... To be honest, I'm inclined to agree with some of the critiques of the Kos poll's methodology. In particular, it's hard for me to believe that the questions the poll asked -- they led with questions about whether Obama should be impeached, whether he was born in the United States, and whether he's a socialist -- did not some how condition the responses to the latter questions, or induce some of the more moderate Republicans to drop out of the sample. ... In short, it appears to me that the Kos/Research 2000 poll -- probably for reasons having to do with the nature and ordering of the questions although other hypothesis are plausible -- wound up with a very and perhaps unrepresenatively conservative set of Republicans. Upon further examination, I'd encourage caution in interpreting its results. ...[/rquoter] A couple other links for the interested: A more detailed critique of the poll. Information on how the poll was conducted (in particular item 5).
[Proof] Plurality of Poll believers are idiots 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. 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. I can't express enough my gratitude to Mark, Michael, and Jonathan for helping bring this to light. Sure, our friends on the Right will get to take some cheap shots, and they should take advantage of the opportunity. But ultimately, this episode validates the reason why we released the internal numbers from Research 2000 -- and why every media outlet should do the same from their pollster; without full transparency of results, this fraud would not have been uncovered. As difficult as it has been to learn that we were victims of that fraud, our commitment to accuracy and the truth is far more important than shielding ourselves from cheap shots from the Right. Soon, we'll have a new pollster (or pollsters) to work with, helping us to fulfill our vision of surveying races and issues that are often overlooked by the traditional media and polling outfits. As for Research 2000, the lawyers will soon take over, as Daily Kos will be filing suit within the next day or two. * ::
I considered posting this myself, but decided not to dredge up the old thread and was too lazy to start a new one yet. It's a big story. I'm not sure how serious you're being with your fake headline, though. Hopefully not very. While it is folly to put too much stock in any single poll or assume that a poll must accurately represent the views of the people it claims to, that doesn't mean these polls are useful only for idiots. In this particular case, there is other evidence to back up what this particular poll stated, including a poll done by a much more reputable pollster (which is could theoretically be where these guys got information to base made up data on). I admit I'm surprised by this news. Not so much that it is easy to fake poll data, but that so few people look at the data like this to see if it is realistic. Hopefully the guys who created this report and others will do more work to verify the legitimacy of poll takers and the polls they publish.
Wow. I feel simultaneously snowed, betrayed and stupid for assisting in passing along bad information -- and for arrogantly trumpeting it into the bargain. Mea culpa. If this poll (or any of their others) was indeed conducted dishonestly, I hope Research 2000 will face very severe penalties.
This forum was always trashy. It was trashy 8 years ago when I was here, and it's actually the exact same now. It was so silly and so partisan that I just made up my own basso type persona to satirize the right but it ironically actually antagonized the left. That's how trashy of a place this is. But I keep coming back, darn it!
I'm not defending Republicans by any means, but idiots come in all colors and sizes. This is hardly a revelation.
I'm flattered, but you should remove it from your signature. Political signatures are banned here, except for basso who does whatever he wants.
I just read up on this, and my respect for Markos went up immensely. I would have never imagined a member of the echo chamber on either side with such a sincere mea culpa. He got screwed and should go after R2000 for whatever they're worth, but he has handled the mess with class.
The R2000 guy is just nuts - it's actually pretty funny. He was threatening criminal sanctions on DailyKos and other such fun. It's like he's just making up legal standards to along with the made up polls. It's going to be fun to watch this all play out.
I think this is exactly right. It sounds like Kos could have quietly switched pollsters and swept this under the rug, when the anomalies were first brought to his attention. He would have had a lot to gain by doing that, especially since his book that relies on in part on R2K polling, is just coming out. So far, I've been very impressed with how he's dealt with this.
