(H/T for Video: Jammie Wearing Fools)
That is very sloppy programming, where no answer within the alloted time defaults to the first choice (which, in this case, happens to be “Barack Obama”). A lack of response should either be ignored by the pollster (and most polling companies won’t tell us how many people refuse to answer) or counted as “no answer”.
Of course, some people will suspect that this is deliberate poll-rigging (although one shouldn’t rush to attribute to malice anything which can be adequately explained by stupidity). Even if that is the case, then it’s still sloppy programming because, if you’re rigging the poll to take silence as a vote for Obama, you don’t have the program say so out loud and thus provide evidence of your chicanery.
Robomonkey's Blog 
20 September 2012 at 5:45 PM
I was called by this group…all these polls are bullshit because that have no options but Obama and Romney
20 September 2012 at 7:31 PM
You’d think this time around they’d be encouraging third party candidates… At least, the ones who’d be drawing more votes from Romney than Obama.
In any case, my boss said that his neighbor got the same thing, a message on her answering machine that was counted as an Obama vote. So this is happening in more than one state.