The Hill News

A top union and a top liberal blog announced Tuesday that they'll team up to sponsor polling through the 2012 elections.

Daily Kos and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said they will join forces to conduct issue and campaign polling in key states and races over the next two years.

The joint poll continues an effort by Daily Kos, a premiere liberal blog founded in 2002 by Markos Moulitsas, a contributor to The Hill, to take its advocacy a step further, and provide raw political information to readers, especially on races and issues of importance to that online community.

"Rather than sit around and have know-nothing pundits and politicians in DC tell us what the American people think, we prefer to ask them directly," Moulitsas said in a statement. "And this partnership will allow us to conduct significantly more polling than any other media organization in the country.”

“We continue to work to ensure our me! mbers have their voices heard in the political process and honest, objective polling plays an important role in identifying the issues that concern working families and the politicians that can best advocate for working people,” added SEIU National Political Director Brandon Davis.

The SEIU/Daily Kos poll will use Public Policy Polling (PPP), a Democratic firm that uses automated polling rather than live, over-the-phone survey methods. Moulitsas contracted with PPP in June of 2010 after severing ties with Research 2000, which faced allegations of producing faulty poll results.

Daily Kos, like other liberal blogs, have taken an increasingly active role in advocacy, campaigns, and fundraising. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), for instance, has used Daily Kos as a medium to help raise over $500,000 to support recall efforts against Republican state senators in Wisconsin.