In a paper for the Democratic Audit of Australia, Olof Petersson (Research Director for the Democratic Audit of Sweden), writes that the fear of undue influence on voters is the reason why many democracies have discussed and quite a few have decided to regulate the publication of election polls. Yet such action raises several difficult questions. Do polls really influence voting behaviour? Is a total or partial ban on election polls compatible with basic democratic principles such as the freedom of the press? And could a national embargo on the publication of polls really be effective in a world of Internet and global media?