Daily Kos renounces pollster, threatens fraud suit

Updated 5:29 p.m.

By Garance Franke-Ruta

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of the Daily Kos blog, disavowed the results of all polls conducted for his site by the firm Research 2000, alleging that they were unreliable and possibly fraudulent.

His accusation, posted on Daily Kos Tuesday:

"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," Moulitsas wrote.

He made the accusation based on a statistical analysis of the Research 2000 results that raised questions about their validity. Its conclusion: "We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls."

Given that outcome, Moulitsas declined to stand by any Daily Kos blog posts based on Research 2000 polls. "I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else," he wrote. "I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling."

One of the most provocative findings of the firm was that a substantial portion of Republicans did not believe President Obama was born in the United States. A July 2009 poll for Daily Kos found that 28 percent of Republicans were "birthers," as those who question Obama's birth place are frequently called.

Washington Post polling in April 2010 found similar results, with 31 percent of Republicans saying Obama was born in another country.

"Daily Kos will be filing suit within the next day or two," Moulitsas wrote.

Research 2000 president Del Ali referred all questions to his attorney. "I will tell you unequivocally that we conducted every poll properly for the Daily Kos," he said.

Nate Silver from the blog FiveThirtyEight has also raised questions about Research 2000's methods and results. On Tuesday afternoon, Ali's attorneys sent a "cease and desist demand " letter demanding Silver stop criticizing Research 2000 publicly.

In addition to Daily Kos, Research 2000 has polled for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action and many other progressives.