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This election has proved something of a trial for opinion pollsters. Not only have there been an unprecedented number of polls — sometimes three in one day — but with the closeness of the race for much of the campaign there has also been a marked disparity of findings. On the same day, one poll will have one party in the lead and another in third, while another poll will have the reverse.

Once upon a time Canada used to ban polls in the final days of a campaign, before this was thrown out by the Supreme Court. Later, the blackout was shortened to election day, but this too was repealed. And with good reason: whatever anyone thinks of them (there’s probably a poll on that, too), opinion polls provide citizens with useful information — namely, what their fellow citizens are thinking.

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To be sure, we could probably get by with fewer polls. We folks in the media tend to pay far too much attention to them — to the proverbial horse race, rather than the conversation the parties are supposed to be having with the voters and each other. And yet voters have every right to consult the polls as part of their deliberations.