I just think there's something innately flawed about public forecasting of an election. It used to be the case in France that you weren't allowed to publish po

I just think there's something innately flawed about public forecasting of an election. It used to be the case in France that you weren't allowed to publish polls two weeks before an election for just this reason. They eventually scrapped this with the argument that the all 'elites' had access to internal and private polls anyway so all you where doing was denying the 'people' the same access to information that the 'elites' had. It could even be argued that polling itself could influence opinions by introducing bias at a critical moment when someone is being asked to consider who they are voting for. This is a pretty well known effect, to the point that many political strategists try to avoid publishing or drawing attention to polls showing their candidate too far ahead in case it makes voters complacent and decide to stay home. The ideal situation is to make people convinced the polls show the candidates tied 50-50 going in to the election and that 'your' vote could easily swing the whole election.