Interesting Polling News

[renowiggum]

Once upon a time, DailyKos contracted with Research 2000 to do some polling for them. Among the results, they showed that Republicans are mind-numbingly stupid.

However, as it turns out... the results appear to be either highly altered, or utterly fictitious (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/29/880179/-Research-2000:-Problems-in-plain-sight). DailyKos has posted the results (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/29/880185/-More-on-Research-2000), and in that story I noticed this:

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.

So now I'm really curious... what polling has Research 2000 done for the RGJ, and what were the conclusions?

[student4ever]

Two posts from fivethirtyeight about the situation
Link 1 (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/my-own-suspicions-about-research-2000.html)
Link 2 (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/breaking-daily-kos-to-sue-research-2000.html)

It will be interesting to see what the RGJ says, if anything.

FWIW, R2K was a 4.4 point democratic lean in fivethirtyeight's senate forecast model.

[renowiggum]

Not wanting to pay for the rights to each article, here's the RGJ archive search results for "Research 2000 (http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/rgj/results.html?st=basic&QryTxt=%22Research+2000%22)"

[student4ever]

http://www.rgj.com/article/20070817/NEWS19/708170423/So-far-it-s-Clinton-Romney

Here's one I was able to pull up. Interestingly, one of the things that caught the eyes of people who caught this was the uniform even-odd distribution pattern. In this article, all of republicans polled with even numbers and all of the democrats polled with odd numbers.

Pollster.com has all of the polls archived. Here's the google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&domains=pollster.com&sitesearch=pollster.com&&sa=X&ei=F2EqTKa4MqLenQe_jqHWDg&ved=0CBMQBSgA&q=Reno+Gazette-Journal+Research+2000&spell=1) of that site.

[renowiggum]

Now, Nate Silver (@FiveThirtyEight.com) has gotten a cease and desist letter (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/research-2000-issues-cease-desist.html) from Research 2000's lawyers.

This is going to be interesting to watch.

[student4ever]

Yeah. Nate got a similar letter last year, stuck to his guns, and ended up shutting down and disgracing another polling firm that was just making numbers up. I don't see him backing down this time either.