Polls don't vote, people vote!

...to paraphrase the National Rifle Association's very old and often trotted out war cry. Unlike in the U.S., where pre-election polls seem to come out almost daily, polls predicting which parties are the most popular and how many seats each party would take "if the election were held today" are officially banned in Patria. The reason for the ban is so that voters will not think "my party is trailing so badly that it's not worth voting", or "my party is such a shoo-in that I don't need to vote", or "I like Party A, but they're trailing so badly in the polls that I should just hold my nose and vote for Party B".

Although there are no official polls, there are plenty of rumors and on-the-street talk about which party is the front-runner and how many seats each party could win. Current scuttlebutt: the Amrita Party is trailing the SRM badly and could lose almost half of its seats, the Jungle Party could double or even triple its seats (the Jim Rome show is becoming extremely popular in Patria!), and the SRM is the real wild card as its "no more made-in-China" economic nationalism is playing very well among voters who have lost their jobs, had their homes foreclosed, or have been otherwise screwed over since the economy went down the crapper.