Madam Speaker, I do often worry about the extent to which the publishing of polls can affect public opinion, but it is something that is accentuated in a first-past-the-post system. If there is a proportional system of some kind, then in spite of whatever polling is saying about who is going to win the most seats, people can still feel they are contributing to electing people they agree with and who are going to speak on their behalf and raise issues that are of importance to them.
That effect is amplified by the voting system we have. Unfortunately, getting information about where people are at and the kind of attitude pundits have when they are predicting outcomes can affect voter turnout. I would hope that by moving toward some kind of proportional system we could diminish those effects, because people can still go and vote with confidence.
I was quite disheartened by the recent comments of the Prime Minister about proportional representation and some rewriting of history in what he presented to the electorate in 2015. Perhaps someone else will want to ask me a question about that and I can elaborate a little further.