Liars, Damn Liars and Statisticians

What do you call someone who has worked for a political campaign? And what do you call someone who has donated the personal maximum allowable amount to political campaigns? And what do you call someone involved in an scheme to avoid public revelation and discourse on a consultancy contract awarded to a private firm but paid for with public dollars?

That's right, a partisan hack, potentially engaging in criminal behavior. Now, if I were to tell you that the hack worked for a democratic congressman, donated large sums to liberal causes, and was involved in a cover up of a contract awarded to a left-leaning organization, you'd dismiss their opinions and research as bunk without further consideration.

But Davis Lundy, head of the Moriah Group and who commissioned this poll, worked for the campaign to elect Congressman Zach Ramp (R-TN), is on the public record of donating thousands of dollars to Republicans and conservative causes, and is up to his eyeballs in an educational board scandal, and is (without further research, I won't say a conspirator) implicated in violation of Tennessee's Sunshine Law as part of a group that withheld information from voting members of a school board "to avoid public debate."

The poll itself was conducted by a firm named Public Opinion Strategies that makes no bones about being Republican, and shreds their objectivity at first glance with the headline PUBLIC OPINION STRATEGIES MOURNS REPUBLICAN LOSSES, CONGRATULATES MANY INDIVIDUAL WINNERS IN TOUGH RACES in a prime spot on their homepage. An analysis of the poll, says David E. Johnson of Strategic Vision (a Republic polling firm themselves, ahem...) shows it was "leading and designed to elicit the answers they got."

Pure bunk. So much for this talking point.

Read more here and here.