Whoa! Public Policy Polling Spiked Its Own Poll Predicting Democrat Downfall in Colorado Recall

PPP is the Tom Jensen outfit that polls for Daily Kos and won plaudits for its accuracy during last year's presidential campaign. But now it turns out that accurate polling is less important that helping your side win. Just one more example of our system's corruption by left-wing partisan polarization these days.

At the Hill, "Firm suppressed Colorado recall poll":

Public Policy Polling (PPP) sparked controversy Wednesday after the left-leaning firm declined to release a survey it conducted last weekend that accurately forecasted the successful recall of a Democratic state senator from Colorado.

The survey PPP conducted, but did not release, showed Colorado District 3 Sen. Angela Giron (D) would be recalled by a 54 percent to 42 percent margin.

“In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll,” Director Tom Jensen wrote in a post on the firm's website. “It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.”

Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight blog at TheNew York Times accurately predicted every state in the 2012 presidential election, criticized the firm over Twitter.

The tweets are embedded at the link (via Memeorandum).

Jensen's explanation is disingenuous. All polls have a margin of error and they're always published with the normal disclaimers of systematic bias, etc. Clearly, the guy was morbidly terrified that his own survey would demoralize the left and drive down Democrat turnout. So, what to do? Spike your findings with the lame excuse that "there was no way we could be right." Oh sure. There was "no way." And this coming from the pollster who best predicted the 2012 presidential election results.

Here's the full response from PPP, "Reflecting on the Colorado recalls" (via Memeorandum).