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Nate Silver calls out PPP

ESPN's Nate Silver ripped into Public Policy Polling after the left-leaning firm admitted Wednesday that it decided to not release a poll this week showing a Colorado lawmaker being recalled by a wide margin, because they didn't believe the results.

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

PPP's Twitter handle, run by the firm's director Tom Jensen, was quick to respond, challenging Silver

@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

.@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

Silver called the practice "indefensible" and said he's "especially skeptical when a pollster puts its finger on the scale in a way that matches its partisan views."

"If you suppress 'outliers' you don't like but tolerate those you do, you wind up with a very biased average," Silver tweeted.

PPP tweeted that Silver's shot at the company "is absurd and just shows total lack of understanding of the obligations private polling companies have to the public."

The argument continued:

@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

About 30 minutes after the Twitter spat started, Jensen tweeted an apology to Silver for the public fight.

Apologies to @fivethirtyeight - I think his criticism of us is unjustified but no need for a big fight in public #MovingOn — PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 11, 2013