The other night I got a call (still have that dumb land line) from pollster who was asking me all kinds of questions about the upcoming New York City elections. She asked my favorable/unfavorable ratings of the candidates and a bunch of other questions and then asked: "Do you expect to plan to vote for the Democrat or the Republican candidate" for mayor. I said "neither," and my answer couldn't be coded. She explained that I had to answer one or the other, and I said that I'm not a Republican or a Democrat and I don't expect to vote for either and that I would choose a third party, and she abruptly ended the call.

I wonder how much that kind of thing happens. If widespread it certainly understates third party voters in polling.

geojanes wrote:I wonder how much that kind of thing happens. If widespread it certainly understates third party voters in polling.

That is pretty poor. In the UK we have a very minor squabble going on in the polling community:

At the moment people are asked how they will vote (also which party they associate themselves with, which is different), and are usually prompted with the names of the major parties. That list was consistent across companies until a few years ago - Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat. However, in the last couple of years a fourth party (UKIP) has grown more popular, and as well as getting good results in by-elections and local elections they are polling a little higher than the Liberal Democrats. They don't have any MPs, but do have MEPs. Some companies prompt for them and others don't, and you can see that may explain different response rates in the polls. There are good points put against prompting (because they are a new party, and often a 'protest vote' which people use outside main elections but go back to their usual party or not voting for the national votes, because prompting in polls may give them more visibility at the time than they get generally...)

However, if someone said 'UKIP' to a pollster that does not prompt for them, it would still be recorded to UKIP. As would a response for several other parties (Green and Respect at a UK level, SNP and Plaid at Scottish/Welsh level and the various NI parties over there) . Even if someone came up with an obscure one (Mebyon Kernow or the Tooting Popular Front) it would be recorded as an 'Other'.

No wonder that some US pollsters are surprised when the real results come in. I think that it also has the effect of depressing visibility of third party support, which makes it harder for any third party to make any headway.