There is no ViewData item of type 'IEnumerable<SelectListItem>' that has the key 'xxx'

Ok, so the answer was derived from some other posts about this problem and it is:

If your ViewData contains a SelectList with the same name as your DropDownList i.e. "submarket_0", the Html helper will automatically populate your DropDownList with that data if you don't specify the 2nd parameter which in this case is the source SelectList.

What happened with my error was:

Because the table containing the drop down lists was in a partial view and the ViewData had been changed and no longer contained the SelectList I had referenced, the HtmlHelper (instead of throwing an error) tried to find the SelectList called "submarket_0" in the ViewData (GRRRR!!!) which it STILL couldnt find, and then threw an error on that :)

Please correct me if im wrong

Old question, but here's another explanation of the problem. You'll get this error even if you have strongly typed views and aren't using ViewData to create your dropdown list. The reason for the error can becomes clear when you look at the MVC source:

// If we got a null selectList, try to use ViewData to get the list of items.
if (selectList == null)
{
    selectList = htmlHelper.GetSelectData(name);
    usedViewData = true;
}

So if you have something like:

@Html.DropDownList("MyList", Model.DropDownData, "")

And Model.DropDownData is null, MVC looks through your ViewData for something named MyList and throws an error if there's no object in ViewData with that name.

I had same error, I think the problem is that the error text is confusing, because its giving a false key name.

In your case It should say "There is no ViewData item of type 'IEnumerable' that has the key "Submarkets"".

My error was a misspelling in the view code (your "Submarkets"), but the error text made me go crazy.

I post this answer because I want to say people looking for this error, like I was, that the problem is that its not finding the IENumerable, but in the var that its supposed to look for it ("Submarkets" in this case), not in the one showed in error ("submarket_0").

Accepted answer is very interesting, but as you said the convention is applied if you dont specify the 2nd parameter, in this case it was specified, but the var was not found (in your case because the viewdata had not it, in my case because I misspelled the var name)

Hope this helps!