The falling-out – and fallout – between Research 2000 and the Daily Kos has been entertaining, and promises to be much so in the future. The counter-suing has already begun (by the way; every lawyer I know is goggle-eyed at the way that Moulitsas’ attorney has set himself and his client up for a defamation lawsuit, completely independent of the fraud lawsuit), and both sides seem determined to make me cheerfully root for injuries, so this is going to be fun.
But there is a serious question: what do we do about the polls out there now?
DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas is asking poll-trackers to remove from their sites what he calls the “bunk” Research 2000 polls he once sponsored, after he expressed doubt on the accuracy of the company’s numbers. And if poll-trackers comply, some Republicans could see a bump in their poll averages on those sites.
It’s not that easy an answer, actually. Naturally Moulitsas wants those polls removed: the act of doing so will bolster his court case against R2000*. The problem is that R2000 has been accused of fraud, not convicted of it – and, honestly, establishing a precedent that an accusation is all that you need to remove a polling company from consideration is a bad precedent. The Left would also like to remove Rasmussen and Strategic Vision**, after all – and since the Left’s complaint against the former barely rises above the level of screaming “BAD MAN! DON’T WANNA HEAR YOU! BAD! BAD! BAD!” while kicking the floor and crying, well, that’s another argument against setting the precedent.
You see, we can all live with a slightly lower aggregate ranking for conservative and Republican candidates; after all, we never took the dKos polls seriously in the first place…
Moe Lane
*I’m not pointing a finger there in general, by the way. I’d be asking the same thing, in his shoes. Our own people are seeing the same sort of anomalies that his people are, so it’s not just a case of bolstering his court case.
**They seem to have knocked that one out of the business for a while, at that.