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Daily Kos Sues Research 2000

By Jeralyn

Markos Moulitsas and Daily Kos have filed their federal lawsuit against Research 2000 alleging the weekly polls Daily Kos commissioned from them included phony and falsified data. You can read the lawsuit here. Attorney Adam Bonin (pro hac vice) and Nathan Dooley of COZEN O'CONNOR in LA are representing Markos and Kos Media, LLC in the suit which has been filed in the federal district of Northern California.

A few days ago, I read some blogposts on the suit and got the general gist of what happened, but not being a statistician, I got lost by reading their findings.

Adam and Nathan do a great job with the civil complaint. They understand judges aren't statisticians, and write in simple language that lawyers and lay people can understand. (Theoretically, after all, since these cases are usually settled, juries don't hear most of them. But you can never be sure, so you better be able to break down the tech talk to something they can relate to. Adams succeeds very well at this.

Here's how. [More...]

The text of the lawsuit, thanks to Greg Sargeant of the Plum Line at the Washington Post is here. On June 6, 2010, noted statistician and political analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com and the New York Times published a comprehensive article titled “Pollster Ratings v4.0: Results,” ranking all political polling firms based on detailed statistical analysis of the accuracy of their polling. Of the sixty-four polling firms which had conducted ten or more polls which Silver ranked, Research 2000 was among the five worst in terms of accuracy. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/pollster-ratings-v40-results.html">available on online.

Paragraph 22 begins with how the problems came to light:

On June 6, 2010, noted statistician and political analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com and the New York Times published a comprehensive article titled “Pollster Ratings v4.0: Results,” ranking all political polling firms based on detailed statistical analysis of the accuracy of their polling. Of the sixty-four polling firms which had conducted ten or more polls which Silver ranked, Research 2000 was among the five worst in terms of accuracy.

As part of his correspondence to Ali terminating the relationship, Moulitsas noted: “Currently, you owe us some polls. We won't pursue any refund. We'll just call it even.” Ali responded by writing, “Best of luck to you” and attached a lengthy self-defense of his polling methods, lashing out at the NYT’s Silver as “nothing more than a fringe blogger.” At neither that point nor at subsequent point did Ali communicate to Moulitsas any different understanding as to the parties’ financial obligations to each other.

On June 14, 2010, Moulitsas was approached by a number of independent statistical analysts with regards to Research 2000’s polling for DailyKos.Their analysis of the published data regarding the results which revealed that Research 2000 had almost certainly falsified the results in whole or in part.

As part of his correspondence to Ali terminating the relationship, Moulitsas noted: “Currently, you owe us some polls. We won't pursue any refund. We'll just call it even.” Ali responded by writing, “Best of luck to you” and attached a lengthy self-defense of his polling methods, lashing out at the NYT’s Silver as “nothing more than a fringe blogger.” At neither that point nor at subsequent point did Ali communicate to Moulitsas any different understanding as to the parties’ financial obligations to each other.

On June 14, 2010, Moulitsas was approached by a number of independent statistical analysts with regards to Research 2000’s polling for DailyKos. Their analysis of the published data revealed a number of statistical anomalies regarding the results which revealed that Research 2000 had almost certainly falsified the results in whole or in part.

Now, here's the rub:

The anomalies detected included that among 778 weekly polling questions regarding a politician’s “favorables” allegedly performed by Research 2000, the purported male and female sub-samples either came out both with even numbers or both with odd numbers 776 of 778 times; the “unfavorables” were both even or both odd 777 of 778 times. Since the odds of getting a match each time randomly is 50%, the odds of obtaining 776/778 matches is the odds of obtaining 776 heads on The only logical conclusion is that the numbers for there groups were not generated by independent polling but by falsification of data in whole or in part.

Even I can understand that. Then there's Ali's stall:

On Monday, June 14, 2010, Moulitsas approached Ali with his concerns. In response, Ali promised via email on that date to provide Moulitsas with the raw data from which the polling results were constructed to verify their validity.

On Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Ali emailed Moulitsas with regards to the raw data, stating that “you can expect it either Friday, if not, no later than Monday.”

On Monday, June 21, Ali again stalled, emailing Moulitsas to state: “I am at a Kinkos computer because we cannot read any mail from our PC,s [sic] and cannot attached [sic] any documents or files to send. Reading email from my cell. Just
got to a Kinkos. Computer Geeks cannot do anything until tomorrow morning 778 tosses of a fair coin, an event which should occur one in every 10 228 (ten followed by 228 zeroes) times. The likelihood of the unfavorable results having occurred by chance is one in every 10 231. The only logical conclusion is that the numbers for there groups were not generated by independent polling but by falsification of data in whole or in part.

As of this date, Wednesday June 30, 2010, despite numerous requests from Moulitsas and purported commitments from Ali to provide the raw data which could verify Research 2000’s polling’s validity, Ali has refused to provide this data.

Those are the facts that Dkos presents. Even I can understand them. I'm not sure what Research 2000 will say in response, but I'd be worried if I were them.

Granted, Markos has been a friend of mine since 2002, when we both began our blogs, and I'd take his side in just about anything. But reading through the lawsuit, with my lawyer hat on, I see difficulties ahead for Research 2000. I also think it was very well laid out by Adam (and Nathan, if he participated.)

This lawsuit could have tremendous repercussions for Research 2000. As Greg Sargant and indeed the company's owner points out, they do polling for a lot of MSM publications and their client base may start departing in droves if Markoos and Adam make their case -- even in the media. Knowing how smart and strategic the Markos and Adam are, I'm expecting them to do just that.

Good luck, Markos and Adam. TalkKeft is rooting for you.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 02, 2010 (boomark / email).