Markos’ pollster was defrauding him.
Boo, hoo.
[Update a couple minutes later]
“I hope Kos’ book hasn’t gone to the printer.”
Hey, live by the lies, die by the lies.
[Update a few minutes later]
Geraghty is saying “I told you so.”
[Mid-afternoon update]
Some useful thoughts from Jonah’s readers:
One of the most tasty of several delicious ironies connected with this story is the way the bogus polls seem to damaged closely-contested leftist political campaigns. The nutroots wasted a couple of million dollars, by my count, on races that were probably not winnable.
And this:
Did you look at the cross tabs on that thing? Many of the questions are laugh out loud funny in a tin foil hat sort of way. I loved this one: Should women work outside the home? That’s kooky even by Kos standards. That’s just the thing. The Kos guys dreamed up these question thinking these are the sorts of things right-wing crazies discuss in their secret lair. Can you imagine getting asked this stuff by a pollster? 90% of Americans would hang up after three questions like this.
The R2000 guys may be crooks, but Kos was asking for it. He was willing to pay for “polling data’ that confirmed his only little brand of moonbattery. Now he’s pissed that the polling company was unable to supply it without resorting to deceit.
Well, a fool and his money. But I guess it does show that the left is at least honest in their delusory and fantasized caricatures of conservatives. I often wonder whether they’re liars or just nuts. Now I guess we know.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Why Kos should have suspected something fishy months ago:
1/18/10 Politico – Insider Advantage Brown 52 – Coakley 43
1/18/10 ARG – Brown 52 – Coakley 45
1/18/10 PJM – Brown 52 – Coakley 42
1/18/10 Daily KOS – Brown 48 – Coakley 48
1/17/10 InsideMedford-MRG – Brown 51 – Coakley 41
1/17/10 PPP – Brown 51 – Coakley 46
1/16/10 ARG – Brown 48 – Coakley 45
1/15/10 PJM/CrossTarget – Brown 54 – Coakley 39
1/14/10 Suffolk University – Brown 50 – Coakley 46
1/14/10 R2000 – Brown 41 – Coakley 49
He was paying them to tell him what he wanted to hear.
Anyone know what the English word for Schadenfreude is?
There is none. That’s why we use schadenfreude. English is a very plagiaristic and flexible language. As someone once said, we not only borrow words, we sneak up behind them in dark alleys, club them and abduct them.
I spoke in jest, it is one of my favourite English words. I’d tell you what my favourite ones are, but they’re slightly too colourful. 😉
Wow…
So maybe the tea party isn’t made up of crazy racist birthers like the Kos polls claimed.
Apologies incoming in 3, 2, …
To Kos’ credit (!), he seems to have handled the concerns raised just right. Good for him.
And it’s a clever bit of statistical work; I recommend reading the actual report. It looks as though the pollsters may just have been lazy/crooked and faked results that they thought Kos would like, rather than bothering with all that tedious and costly, you know, polling…
Rand, that quote is from James D. Nicoll:
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
I knew it was something like that.
I’d rather have a mongrel, flexible language in English than the bureaucracy the French have for theirs. Really, what is the alternative you’re proposing, Newspeak? Do you REALLY want government control over the language? I’m sure the Dems would love that!
As for the pollsters, I’m sure this all an evil plan by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.
My last line above should read:
As for the pollsters, I’m sure this is all an evil plan by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. (/sarcasm)
Won’t he be a big hit on the morning show circuit. I bet Olbermouth gives him a whole week.
It seems worth mentioning the Research 2000 people did a poll of voter attitudes toward space programs, which merited a post at Space Politics(http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/06/01/new-poll-on-space-spending) back on June 1 and some discussion, much of which — including my own — now seems to have been seriously befudddled.
Live and learn.
This is straight commercial fraud here and while it’s easy to understand that someone with Kos’ biases would have fallen for this more easily, they still have the right to get the product they paid for. [I was a classmate and am a friend of Kos’ lawyer in this matter — smart guy, great friend, wrong on so very many things — and I think R-2000 are in for a world of hurt here].
That’s why pundits right and left should stop using goddamn polls. For one thing, it’s too easy to set up a poll in such a way that you can fix the outcome ahead of time (see the “should women work outside the home” question — even an equivocal, balanced answer like “maybe not when they have small children” can be changed to “no!” and then suddenly you’re a neanderthal knuckle-dragging wingnut who wants to chain women to a stove). For another thing, people lie to polls all the time, especially when the questions are freighted in such a way as to bring out peoples’ social status defenses.
And you have no idea how representative the samples are, or if the pollsters even bothered doing their jobs. Here’s the thing: supporting any argument you have with polls is like saying “my ideas are good because they’re popular.” Polyester leisure suits for men in ice cream shades were popular too.
Have the courage of your own convictions. If you believe that normal conservative Americans want to cover women in black sackcloth, behead their enemies, and stone adulterers, then say so. If you want to say that Obama was really born in Indonesia and prays to Mecca five times a day, say so. Say why. And if you are challenged, have a better argument than “this group of complete strangers checked off a form that means they agree with me.” That’s lazy and shows you don’t really believe what you’re pushing.
The exception, Andrea, would be global warming, where a consensus of scientists makes it true…
I believe they finally revealed that the “consensus” was faked too.
Hah! What suckers. R2000 reminds me of ‘Baghdad Bob’. Hmm…
If R2000 = ‘Baghdad Bob’, then Daily Kos = ?
If R2000 = ‘Baghdad Bob’, then Daily Kos = ?
Al-Jazeera?
I remember the first time some blog commenter (and I use the term loosely) presented an R2000/DKos poll to try to contradict some Rasmussen findings. As soon as I saw the Kos name associated with it I dismissed it, only to be told, “Kos only paid for the poll — it was conducted by a professional polling firm.”
I shall cherish that memory.
Please remember:
Dismissing a poll based on who commissioned it is not consistent with being a truth-seeker.