Welcome to the Thursday edition of your open thread. It’s post-General Assembly bill-passing orgy day. Who attended the session? Could you stay for the whole thing?
Also, Happy Canada Day!
Greg Sargent at PlumLine takes a look at the lawsuit filed by Daily Kos against polling organization Research 2000 and summarizes the claims:
Among the news in the lawsuit, which was filed late yesterday in northern California:
1) The suit alleges that Research 2000 founder Del Ali repeatedly promised to volunteer to Kos the raw polling data behind the surveys, but never came through — potentially raising further suspicions. The suit quotes multiple emails from Ali to Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, vowing to share the data.
The suit quotes an email from Ali that seemed to ask for more time to furnish the data because of office computer malfunctions, prompting him to go to a Kinkos. “I am at a Kinkos computer because we cannot read any mail from our PCs,” Ali emailed to Moulitsas, according to the suit.
2) The suit alleges that Research 2000 had money problems, which could prompt further questions about the firm’s business practices. It alleges that Ali asked Moulitsas to make one lump-sum payment in advance, in exchange for some free polling, because it would provide “immense” help for cash flow reasons.
3) The suit alleges that Ali was infuriated when statistics guru Nate Silver recently rated the firm poorly. It says that when Kos reacted to the Silver analysis by terminating their relationship, Ali responded to Kos with a lengthy defense of his polling methods, lashing out at Silver as “nothing more than a fringe blogger.”
4) The suit says that there was no formal written contract between the two parties, claiming the deal was made verbally and by email.
Sargent also clarifies that the polls that Daily Kos alleges are fraudulent are the weekly tracking polls only, not the other polls. I think we’re all going to learn a lot about polling and polling methods from this lawsuit. I have to add that I thought the report commissioned by dkos on the polling was very compelling and I find the refusal of R2K to release the raw data suspicious.
The DNC has new ad called “On Their Side” detailing how Republicans side with corporations over the American people. Take a look and see what you think.
More like this, please.