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Revisiting Research 2000

Late last month, Daily Kos made a claim that naturally caught our eye: The liberal Web site denounced all the polls it commissioned from Research 2000, calling them patently bogus.

Daily Kos cited an independent investigation and said it would sue, while Research 2000 denied wrongdoing but soon took down its Web site. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas wrote: “We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don’t know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can’t trust it.”

Considering our propensity here at pa2010.com to report any little morsel of polling data we can get our hands on, it seemed prudent to look back at our reporting of Research 2000 surveys, so we deployed the staff to do a little research.

Between August 2009 and May 2010, pa2010.com published at least five articles about Daily Kos/Research 2000 polls. From the limited sample size we examined, it was difficult to discern any pattern of discrepancies between Research 2000 surveys and other polls conducted about the same time. Sometimes, the results were in line with other public polling data. Other times, the results differed, but by statistically insignificant margin.

Regardless, it is important the record be corrected. Because of that, updates that mention Daily Kos’ disavowal of Research 2000 have been appended to all the stories in question. This post has also been added to our Corrections page.

For those polling junkies who want to do their own investigation, we’ve included a list of the stories in question below. Please e-mail us if you find that we missed anything important.

Research 2000 poll shows Specter still leading
Corbett still up over Dem opponents
Specter leads Toomey by 6 in new poll
Specter leads Sestak by two, poll says
Poll: Sestak up 3 against Toomey

July 20, 2010 at 11:03 am

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Corrections

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