Survey researchers have long observed that demographic characteristics of interviewers such as race and gender affect survey responses as well as response rates. Building on this work, we address a previously unexplored question: Do interviewers’ partisan leanings bias data collection in telephone surveys? Leveraging a unique data set in which interviewers reported their partisan identifications before the survey was fielded, we find that interviewers are more likely to ascribe positive experiences to interviews with copartisans. However, we find little evidence to suggest that interviewer partisanship biases interviewer ratings of respondents’ personal characteristics, the answers provided by respondents, item nonresponse, or the measurement error associated with responses.
