For decades, German news media and polling companies had a self-imposed election poll rule: they would not publish any polls within the last ten days before an election.
The high-minded, if condescending reason was to avoid unduly influencing the voters.
As a voluntary rule, there were some publications that pushed the boundaries a bit by inching to seven days, for example the tabloid Bild, but the overall restraint held.
This year, however, the "no poll in the final week" barrier fell, and the Sunday edition of Bild is poised to publish a poll on election day.
The cautious camp has been lamenting the loss of a polling free week and accuses the proponents of edging closer to the "24 hour news cycle".
Have a little bit of faith in people's ability to make up their own mind and not be swayed by last minute polls.
This view of the last minute polling folks is shared by the K-Landnews team, but, of course, there is still some reservation toward the maturity of the "German electorate". This residual reservation is in part explained by the well known choices of German voters in the last century and also, we are sorry to say this, by a measure of generic distrust towards "the people" on the part of those in power and the "educated classes".
We predict that the Sunday poll will not be talked about much once the election is over, and we think it is nice that the self-censorship of the polling companies and the news media slowly erodes.
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