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Daily Kos Pollster Made Up Numbers
jamie found a story up on Daily Kos revealing that the polling firm they had contracted with for 18 months, Research 2000 or R2K, apparently made up or at least manually tweaked its polling results. The blog published a preliminary report by a team of statistics gurus (Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman), and it is an exemplar of clarity and concision. The team reports, "We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls." Daily Kos will be filing a lawsuit against its former pollster. "For the past year and a half, Daily Kos has been featuring weekly poll results from the Research 2000 (R2K) organization. These polls were often praised for their 'transparency,' since they included detailed cross-tabs on sub-populations and a clear description of the random dialing technique. However, on June 6, 2010, FiveThirtyEight.com rated R2K as among the least accurate pollsters in predicting election results. Daily Kos then terminated the relationship. One of us (MG) wondered if odd patterns he had noticed in R2K's reports might be connected with R2K's mediocre track record, prompting our investigation of whether the reports could represent proper random polling. ... This posting is a careful initial report of our findings, not intended to be a full formal analysis but rather to alert people not to rely on R2K's results."
Nobody expects the Daily Kos to be accurate.
Only if you're fond of false equivalencies, or an Obama fanboy. Of which there definitely are some on Dkos, but you'll also find liberals complaining about Obama placing U.S. citizens on CIA hitlists - something you wont find from the teabaggers.
+1 on this.
If Stephen Glass worked for a conservative rag like the National Review, he wouldn't have been fired, he would've been promoted.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
but one left leaning group acting does not support a trend on one side or another. While your political bias is obvious and you do believe what you do extrapolating it such as you do is not accurate.
What we see here in your response is others is acceptance of an issue because it supports the viewpoints of those responding favorably to it. Throw in the left/right condemnation of the mainstream media; itself a generic term that has different meaning to different viewers; and the whole comment comes off as a coffee sipping head nod.
There are very few polls conducted fairly, we have seen this in polls leading up to elections as well as exit polls. Having seen some exit pollsters at work I have seen one common theme, they ask people like themselves. As in, they look similar.
What this action by DailyKOS may do is spur groups on both sides to look at their data in new light. Not every group is blessed with good statistical oversight and many on both sides will discount examinations of their data because it the criticism is seen as leaning the wrong way. Right now with the level of political strife it is only natural for some groups to dig because of the level acrimony.
I know just as many on the right and left who latch on to polls and it never amazes me that they like pollsters who show results that agree with their political leaning and disparage polls that don't as slanted. Its human nature.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's the name you gave yourselves until you eventually found out to your dismay what it meant.
Now you're stuck with it.
Have a nice day.
Signed:
A traitor scum liberal douchebag going-to-hell-athist communist nazi socialist jew from Canada (or something) as described by the incessant idiocy on the Right.
-- BMO
The name is and was "Tea Party" asshole. The perjorative was given to them by the Left. Is there some mental defect that requires all liberals to be liars?
"I didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called 'Mr.Evil,' thank you very much!"
"Teabagging" referring to the American neo-idiot movement was a term coined by the American neo-idiot movement.
I'd go into depth but Olbermann says it much better.
Oh yeah... Asshole.
Someone had to do it.
Yet we see that the Teabagging right is perfectly fine with calling everyone around them that don't buy into the Teabagger philosophy "traitors" and go right out and buy books written by vile disgusting authors who have scads of time on national television (Anne Coulter) with that very word in the title.
Oh yeah, and Sarah Palin and Anne Coulter are never going to sleep with you.
Piss off, teabagger. Anyone with more than a few brain cells see that the Teabagger movement is philosophically, factually, and morally bankrupt.
--
BMO
The grandparent thinks that sucking the corporate master's pecker = "conservative"
.. I think its due to the fact that both words begin with a C and since they arent well educated beyond their anti-capitalism brainwashing.. well.. you know...
Most liberals seem to think that supporting corporations is "conservative"
"His name was James Damore."
Do you really support continuation of both wars (one somewhat declared, another one not)
No.
continuation of executive power special privileges
What do you mean by "special" - the ones invented by Bush or earlier ones? It's funny how the party in power doesn't like to give it up and that the Tea Partiers had no problem with Bush exercising his.
, *new* PATRIOT act
What "new" patriot act? Enacted under Bush, that the Tea Party has no problem with? It's the same old thing. But I was *UNAMERICAN* for not backing it when it was enacted. Because the terrorists would win if we didn't curtail our rights. *spit*
absence of any move to de-criminalize recreational drugs
What has this got to do with anything? Of course I want drugs decriminalized. I'm tired of paying for people to be in prison for non-violent offenses. But I'm not going to hold my breath. And it sure doesn't look like the Tea Partiers are behind this anyway.
, bailouts of huge corporations,
Yeah? That was done by a "conservative" president, who the Tea Party alleges did no wrong. And oh, look, even Reagan bailed out Chrysler.
No. I'm not in favor of it. But I'm also in favor of *real* regulation so we *don't* have to keep bailing out the financial institutions. Funny though, the Tea Partiers and the GOP want Wall Street just go on like nothing ever happened. And then we will have no choice but to bail them out again, and again and again.
making people pay through their nose for their health insurance
I am in favor of Single Payer. Take out the friggin' insurance companies that screw small businesses and make it impossible for me to open a business because I need health insurance to live and I am utterly priced out/uninsurable by myself.
The hysteria surrounding Single Payer is puzzling to me, because EVERY SINGLE GRAY HAIRED TEA PARTIER belongs to a Single Payer Healthcare System. Indeed, study after study has shown that Medicare has been more efficient than even the most miserly for-profit insurance companies like United Health, the most evil one I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
We, as a nation, pay TWICE as much per capita for health care RIGHT NOW and every other major industrialized nation with Single Payer is healthier as a whole and pays LESS THAN HALF WHAT WE DO.
We also need to make it so that doctors don't put themselves into HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS of DEBT just to serve humanity. This more than *anything* is responsible for the insane growth of doctors' fees. They all have to pay back their incredible loans for DECADES. Nobody wants to be a GP anymore. Those who do are SAINTS because they don't make nearly what a specialist does and thus drive around in shitty old cars. I know, my GP has a 10 year old minivan.
Other industrialized countries value doctors and pay for them to go through school. We should too. Money should not be a barrier to education, because more education brings more value to the overall economy.
printing trillions of dollars of new money
Oh look, it's a "gold standard" guy. Really, this is a bogus argument especially since the Euro is down against the Dollar and has been for some time. What hurts America most is China's refusal to float their currency, thus subsidizing *every single import* into the US by fiat. Want manufacturing in the US to come back? Make China float their currency.
(if infusion of money into economy is *really* a solution, why not cancelling income tax for a year, instead of giving your buddies those trillions to "distribute", while taking a percentage off it? :) )?
Are you serious? I'll ask you this and give you my opinion at the end of this message: Do you think the tax policies of the 1950s were good? The 1950s were a spectacularly good economy wise.
Do you have anything better to say than calling people names?
You dare say that, after all the name
Oh yeah, and one last thing.
Where were the Tea Partiers when Bush suspended Habeas Corpus? Where was the outrage? The silence on the right was *deafening.*
The Tea Party is full of hypocritical scumbags who would rather fling rhetoric and call people like me a *traitor* of all things.
So fuck them. Fuck them with a glass-encrusted dildo.
--
BMO