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Patrick Ruffini raises an excellent point on the Daily Kos/Research 2000 controversy, which is a nice followup for my discussion with Brad yesterday. The cost on that massive “Republicans are the American Taliban” survey had to be extreme:
Remember now that Research 2000 never claimed to be a robo-polling outfit. They claimed they did live interviews. And most polls are of likely voters, not registered voters. More screening means more cost. As far as what R2K claimed was its methodology, we’re pretty much talking the Cadillac in terms of what the polls should cost.
So, the question is did Kos really pay high five-figures, or low-six figures, for a single poll to drive eyeballs to one or two blog posts to prove Republicans are nuts? Huh?
I’m guessing no. I’m guessing R2K sold it to him for far less, say $10,000? And anyone with a rudimentary understanding of polling would have known you can’t do a poll like this for that amount of money. So the question now is what this says about what Kos should have known about this. Is he so rich he can drop 100K on a single poll to drive a single day’s news cycle — something not even the major networks would do? Is he simply gullible? Or was he negligent in not checking out what what I can only guess were R2K’s absurd price quotes compared to live operator pollsters?
While it certainly could’ve been funded by an outside party, it seems unlikely that Kos could’ve paid a market rate for it. So if he didn’t pay a market rate, could he really expect a quality product? There’s got to be more to this story. R2K has purchased some serious legal services and seems prepared to fight this out.
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Kos has specifically said that he distrusts all the polls R2K did — including the “birther” poll. However, several other organizations — including the highly-regarded PPP — have replicated these results, with even -more- Republicans taking the “Taliban” positions than they did in the R2K poll.
Out of morbid curiosity, did you read the post to which you're responding?
Yes. The implication seems to be that Kos had to know that he was getting shoddy goods, since it was so cheap. Therefore, the results of that poll should never have been trusted to begin with.
However, the results of that poll have been reproduced on a number of occasions, so while it may have been at a low price — and may in fact have been as fraudulent as other R2K polls appear to have been — that doesn't mean that the “Taliban” results can now be discarded.
This really sounds like your best effort to resurrect the findings of the poll — kind of like those folks obsessed with those polls from a few years ago showing a large minority of Democrats believed George Bush had brought down the World Trade Center — and using Moulitsas's sloppiness with his business as your toe-in-the-door.
I'm never someone to discourage another's nuttiness too strongly, but really, your point is out of line here. You're welcome to believe whatever you want, but please stick to the topics at hand — How stupid is Moulitsas, exactly? Given how much R2k's legal work is going to cost (Howrey costs much more than Cozen), what's really going on here? — or don't bother commenting on this thread.
Thanks.
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