Slashdot Mirror
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."
There is also a glut of self serving, biased, and unqualified people with mod points at Slashdot. The troll mods around these parts are out of fucking control There really needs to be a more effective check on that, or Slashdot will continue its long slow slide toward a Usenet / Digg / YouTubeComments quality of discussion.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Or, the polling could be dead accurate, and the election results that are not correct.
Given todays political climate, it wouldn't be too big a stretch to see our 'politicians' rigging results. How many people have been asked outside the polling offices, who they voted for? How was that tracked? It would be interesting to know.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Sorry but Rasmussen is the most respected polling service out there. Only leftist cockguzzlers blame it of bias because it disagrees with theirs.
The quote you gave merely says that the results that Rasmussen is getting at this time show a public more greatly favoring Republican positions not that Rasmussen is fudging the numbers to get those results.
Ah. Didn't intend to mislead, I was merely pointing out that Republicans do indeed quote Rasmussen measurably more than Democrats, not that Rasmussen cooks its polls. Sorry for the confusion!
Living With a Nerd
if you just read the headline, you'd come away thinking that D.KOS were the culprits instead.
This is slashdot, after all. If they don't keep up their conservative credentials how will they continue to attract conservative advertising revenue?
Hell, it's already Tuesday afternoon in the US and this might be the first pro-conservative story they've run all week; in which case they have a lot of catching up to do in order to make their quota...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Exactly how long did the Daily Kos blindly spew out those poll results while someone wondered about "odd patterns he had noticed in R2K's reports"?
How long had they been featuring those results while there were questions about R2K's quality?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
In other words, they're sorry because they got caught - and they only got caught because of an independent review by an unaffiliated third party.
No, I'd expect an honest media organization to do their own routine reviews of second party material they publish and promote and place the weight of their own reputation behind. But dishonest corporations (of any stripe) can get away with just about anything short of murder because they can bet on two things; First, that people have short memories. Second, that the fanboys will be out in force explaining how it can't possible be the corporations fault. The corporation has always been at war with Eastasia.
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.
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BMO
What the hell? Not even a citation or logged-in account, and you get an instant +5.
You're trying to portray Markos as some moral character when he's the one who cheered troop deaths in Iraq, writing "Screw them" on his site before apologizing and editing his post after receiving major criticism. And 18 months before dumping the pollster isn't exactly an immediate response.
They waited until it was becoming apparent to various observers that the polls were crap before they did anything because the polls supported the Daily Kos' own biased opinions.
If we apply the same standard to the Daily Kos as the Daily Kos and a good portion of the slashdot audience apply to Republic politicians and conservative media, then the Daily Kos and its staff are collectively liars.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Using a derogatory term to refer to someone else is still a form of ad hominem attack, and therefore tacky. Like Eddie Pinder said about the word "nigger": "it has no place is polite conversation".
At the end of the day, the word "teabagger" comes to represent the rancor and resentment that liberals feel against their opponents. One need look no further than the fact that the term has been popularized by left-leaning media outlets (I'm looking at you, Olberman) to realize that its original intent has been perverted (please excuse the intentional pun).
Personally, I thought it was a hell of a lot better when they were just called "Libertarians".
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
I think it's hilarious that this is modded troll by the butthurt teabaggers.
Here, mod this one down while you're at it.
Here's a clue: SARAH PALIN WILL NEVER SLEEP WITH YOU. STOP WORSHIPING HER AS IF SHE WILL.
*snicker*
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BMO