I've got more faith in Mystic Meg than in our pollsters

For two months, a clique of clairvoyants has been filling the newspapers and airwaves with wildly contradictory predictions about the mayoral race. Pseudo-research has become incontestable fact. The great questions of crime, transport, corruption and housing have been submerged by the even greater question: "What are the pollsters saying?"

If they didn't take themselves seriously, I'd have no right to complain. Only a spoilsport could object if Sir Bob Worcester of Mori or Peter Kellner of YouGov dressed in a flowery skirt and gipsy shawl intoning that May was an ill-starred month for Geminis to support the Greens.

Unfortunately, they take themselves very seriously. To make matters worse, so do we. Waves of hope and apprehension, elation and despair, have swept London, based on nothing more than a few researchers asking a few thousand of its seven million or so citizens how they intend to vote.

The effect on political life is pernicious. Mike Smithson, who runs politicalbetting.com, an online tip sheet for election gamblers, found a perfect fit between poll results and the BBC's political coverage. When the polls were saying the Government was doing badly, the BBC was pro-Tory. When the polls put Labour ahead, it disparaged the Opposition.

Smithson was sure he would find the same trends if he plotted newspaper reports. Like me, he despairs at the subversion of democracy that poll-driven politics produces. Politicians are meant to respond to the grievances of voters, who throw them out at elections if their response is inadequate. But pollsters emasculate democracy by anticipating the results of elections. What's the point of voting if "experts" assure you that that one party is bound to win? What's the point of complaining if they say that no one else cares?

It's bad enough being influenced by polls when they're accurate. But in this election, YouGov says Boris has an 11 per cent lead on first preferences while Mori says Livingstone is ahead by three per cent. They can't both be right, although they may both be wrong, and dark conspiracy theories are floating around to explain the staggering discrepancies. As it happens, I know Kellner and Worcester and do not think either is capable of dishonesty but that is not the same as saying I believe their figures.

Come Friday, one or both of them is going to have a lot of explaining to do.

As for the rest of us, can we agree to get to Friday without worrying about their mystic meggery? Let us go to the polls tomorrow as free men and women who follow their consciences, and pay no regard to those who would declare the results of an election before the electorate has voted.