This morning, Democrat polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) announced that they had actually polled the Senator Angela Giron recall and found her losing by 12 points, but had suppressed the results because they allegedly didn’t believe they could be possible.
PPP’s attempt at bragging about getting the results right — Giron lost 56-44 — ended up blowing up in their face, courtesy of Nate Silver, the statistical modeling wunderkind of Five Thirty Eight.
While we don’t expect every private polling firm to release every poll ever conducted, this odd behavior by PPP clearly demonstrates its bias and henceforth will now taint future polls the outfit releases. Nonetheless, the nerd smackdown begins below with select tweets:
Here’s some reflection on the results in CO last night based on polling we did in one of the districts last weekend: http://t.co/yzdZPe9kqw
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 11, 2013
We were concerned when our Colorado recall poll showed 33% of Democrats supporting the recall that there may have been confusion about the q
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 11, 2013
VERY bad and unscientific practice for @ppppolls to suppress a polling result they didn’t believe/didn’t like. http://t.co/tOp5PhUbnf
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
@fivethirtyeight Nate I’m sorry but that is absurd. You’re saying you would put out a model if you had serious concerns that it was wrong?
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 11, 2013
@fivethirtyeight @ppppolls are you alleging they “suppressed” the result because they “didn’t like” it? Serious charge.
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) September 11, 2013
@ThePlumLineGS @ppppolls: But I’m especially skeptical when a pollster puts its finger on the scale in a way that matches its partisan views
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
.@ppppolls : We design our models to be robust in the first place. Then we publish ALL results from them, yes.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
@ppppolls: Yes, so express your cautions in your write-up of the poll. Don’t suppress the data.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
.@ppppolls / @fivethirtyeight dispute turns out to be pretty narrow.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) September 11, 2013
.@brianbeutler : It’s not a narrow point at all. It gets to the core of PPP’s professional standards.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
@fivethirtyeight Are you going to criticize all polling companies that don’t release every poll they conduct or just us?
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 11, 2013
@ppppolls: We’re not exactly known for being friendly to pollsters who play fast and loose with methodology and disclosure standards.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
@ppppolls: Nor are we known for being sympathetic to private polling firms that cherry-pick which data they release.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 11, 2013
So I guess Debbie Wasserman Schultz was RIGHT!… It was Polling Suppression!
Worth a look not only to see just how far the loosing side was willing to go but how deep the infection from the left is.
LOL good job Nate for not backing down. You call 'em like you see 'em. @ PublicPolicyPolling the term transparency is particularly important to a company who is charged with gauging public opinion and you are a perfect example of a transparency FAIL.