Let me start with the caveat that I think polling is a distraction from the important issues in any election, as is the obsession with the horse-race as the candidates surge and falter. In this election in particular, I think our very democracy is being called into question as media institutions using the public’s airwaves are deciding for their listeners, viewers, and readers just which candidates are worthy of hearing out. And they’re making some very anti-democratic decisions.

There’s also one polling institution, Rasmussen Reports, which has consistently approached this year’s gubernatorial race with an oddly biased lens. Since credible polling should be objective by definition, Rasmussen’s sweeping of Green-Rainbow Party candidate Jill Stein under the rug is, by all considerations, quite odd. If I was after an accurate read of how Massachusetts voters were likely to vote in November, I would, well, include all ballot-qualified candidates in my phone interviews. Why Scott Rasmussen would exclude and thereby undercut a capable, articulate, and thoughtful Green Party candidate is a question that can only be answered with speculation, or by Rasmussen himself. Some have called him a Republican pollster, but Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has ranked him quite favorably in his pollster-induced error ratings (he fares better than Suffolk University, for example), and he is not listed as a Republican pollster.

But if the several thousand likely voters polled don’t hear “Green-Rainbow Party candidate Jill Stein” when asked how they would vote, and the hundreds of thousands of people hearing the news reporting of those polls don’t hear anything about Jill Stein, it’s clear that this, uhh, oversight, helps to create a misconception that there are only 3 candidates for governor. It also certainly feeds the narrative that Stein isn’t worthy of press attention, or debate inclusion, or even in speculation that she has a fighting chance to qualify for public financing let alone win the election. This only serves to make it less likely for her to qualify for state matching funds, and harder for her to win the race. It does not serve our democracy.

In the Boston Herald, columnist Margery Eagan used Rasmussen as fodder for her own attempt at keeping Stein under the carpet. She falsely claimed that Stein only got 1% in the latest Rasmussen poll, bolstering her argument that Stein doesn’t have a prayer and shouldn’t distract voters from the real choices they face. Well I’ve got news for you, Margery. Stein wasn’t included in the poll you cite. So 1% of people asked if they’d vote for corporate-sponsored candidates Deval Patrick, Charlie Baker, and Tim Cahill said they were voting for “some other candidate.”

Hardly a fair or accurate way of measuring Stein’s support.

Well, fast forward to the LATEST Rasmussen poll, conducted on Wednesday September 15th, and which came out today. This poll, conducted AFTER the first televised debate, and sandwiched between two disgraceful radio debates that arbitrarily excluded Stein (including Margery’s own!), has “some other candidate” picking up 5% of the vote, putting “some other candidate” in a dead-heat with state treasurer and independent candidate Tim Cahill, who also has 5%. In other words, even WITH misleading the likely voters being interviewed, Jill Stein is picking up 5% of the vote, and has pulled into a tie for third (or what Republican political analyst Jack Gately would call “the race for last place.” I’d call it “the fight for democracy.”).

One important distinction between the September 1st and September 15th polls by Rassmussen is that the latter represents a standard practice of shifting to include “leaners” closer to election day. This means asking those who answer that they are not sure or undecided, whether they are leaning towards a particular candidate, and including that in the results. While 8% ended up “not sure” on September 1st, only 2% did on September 15th, because voters were asked who they were leaning towards. So Stein’s surge from 1% to 5% in just two weeks has something to do with this transition and cannot be compared directly. It’s possible she would have been at 5% two weeks ago.

But now that Stein and Cahill are tied, and perhaps Stein’s numbers are on the rise, it will be interesting to see if the media gives her the kind of attention Cahill has received up until now. And it will be interesting to see how she fares in an unbiased, objective poll that mirrors the November election ballot in all its glorious reality. Perhaps all those hundreds of thousands of voters who were duped by Scott Rasmussen and the media into thinking they didn’t have any real choices will be thrilled to learn that they did all along!