Kos Book Still A Go
Accusations that a pollster hired to conduct surveys for the liberal DailyKos website fabricated some data won't hurt founder Markos Moulitsas's book schedule, he said in an email today.
Kos's book, "American Taliban", is due out Sept. 1. And despite a few citations of their former pollster, Research 2000, he said the tome's overall point remains thanks to other pollsters.
"There isn't a single claim in the book that isn't backed up my multiple polling sources," Moulitsas wrote in an e-mail to Hotline OnCall. "In fact, PPP, Rasmussen, ABC News, Harris, Vanity Fair and 60 Minutes, and others have released data that verifies and supports every single assertion I make in the book."
"After this disaster unfolded, I rushed back to the manuscript to see if there was any collateral damage. Turns out the entire book has only two citations to Research 2000 polling, and both of those times, the results were backed up by additional numbers from other polling outfits. The first was backed up by the right-wing Rasmussen, the second by Pew," Moulitsas said.
In a Feb. 2 diary on DailyKos, Moulitsas published 23 sets of questions and answers Research 2000 conducted with GOPers, claiming a 2% margin of error.
While writing the book, Moulitsas wrote on his blog, "I found myself making certain claims about Republicans that I didn't know if they could be backed up. So I thought, 'why don't we ask them directly?' And so, this massive poll, by non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000 of over 2,000 self-identified Republicans, was born."
Questions included, "Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?", "Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not" and "Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?" At least a third of respondents to each question answered affirmatively, according to the Research 2000 data.
On questions of social issues, Research 2000's numbers indicated that 73% of GOPers said openly gay men and women should not be allowed to teach in public schools, 77% agreed that public school students should be taught "that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world," and 67% supported the idea that "the only way for an individual to go to heaven is (through) Jesus Christ."
Moulitsas only cited Research 2000 data on his Feb. 2 blog entry. Yesterday, he wrote on Daily Kos, "I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling."