Tactical voting is legitimate within the democratic process.  The proposition highlights how tactical voting can be affected by opinion polls. However there is nothing wrong with tactical voting. In fact, it is a crucial feature of a democracy that citizens are not only able to vote for the government they want, but also for the type of opposition that that government will face. Tactical voting also avoids wasted votes under the First-Past-the-Post system Britain and America both use. To enable tactical voting, opinion polls are necessary to inform voters what way they should vote if they wish to vote tactically. That this may sometimes lead to mistakes, is an unfortunate but necessary by-product. Banning opinion polls can therefore have unintended results. In the 1981 French Presidential election once the seven day ban started Chirac’s campaign suggested that their campaign was taking off and he would go through to the second round – which would make it two conservatives in the run off. This frightened communist party supporters into voting tactically to support Mitterand when there may well have been no need. [1]  [1] Bains, Paul, et al., ‘ Public opinion polls: do they do more harm than good?’, Proceedings of the 56th International Statistical Institute Conference, 22-29 August, 2007, Lisboa, Portugal, www.hansardsociety.org.uk/files/folders/3069/download.aspx