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.