Two recent polls of U.S. voters confirm 2010 as an interesting political moment for America, and I think the implication for the Massachusetts gubernatorial election is quite striking. A USA Today/Gallup poll finds record support for a major third political party. While 62% of Tea Party supporters want a third party, 61% of liberals want the same! The poll’s conclusion is that “fifty-eight percent of Americans believe a third major political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic Parties do a poor job of representing the American people.”

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll, meanwhile, finds that women voters, who historically outnumber voting men, and historically support Democratic Party candidates, are less likely to vote this year. While the Times is opaque about the actual poll results, they claim “the poll suggests that they may stay home this year, giving more of the decision-making to men by default” and that “so far in this election, women have not been nearly as attentive as men and have expressed less enthusiasm about voting.”

Taken together, I think Jill Stein’s gubernatorial bid in Massachusetts just might serve as an impetus for women to voice their distaste, and for Massachusetts voters on the whole to advance a potent political alternative.

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.

Boston public radio station WBUR entered the debate this week over whether or not ballot-qualified candidate Dr. Jill Stein was worthy for inclusion in the gubernatorial debates.

In Controversy Grows Over Excluding ‘Outsider’ Candidates From Debates, WBUR features this nails-on-chalkboard quote from its own big-d Democratic political analyst, Dan Payne:

Because Jill Stein will get one quarter of the time and camera and she has not a million-to-one chance to become governor. For her to be given a seat at the table is unfair to the voters, who will then have to wade through the clutter of a fourth candidate in the race.

My question to WBUR: care to hire me as your Green-Rainbow Party political analyst? Who the hell appointed him as a guardian and protector of “the voters”?