NZ Herald has given it’s news website a major makeover this week. It should consider giving it’s approach to polls a major makeover as well.

An article on it’s latest Herald-Digipoll results was headlined Conservative Party lifted by gay issue and the first half of the article is a virtual promo for the Conservative Party. That’s bad enough.

But worse, alongside the Conservative puff piece and above a photo of Colin fraig they had another (online) poll – Which party would get your vote in an election today?

Online polls are notoriously unscientific at the best of times, with dubious reliability or accuracy. They are easy to stack with votes.

That aside, this one must break most of the polling rules, including:

• The link to the page with the poll on it promotes the Conservative Party
• The first half of article promotes the Conservative Party
• Just below the option for Conservtaive Party is a photo of the party leader
• Three parties, two at least of which may compete with the Conservative Party, have been combined as one option
• For several hours I couldn’t have a vote registered  for the combined Other option(I tested between 6am and 10 am).
• Others complained of not being able to vote for the combined Other option.

And claiming “Only 2.5 points to reach Parliament if threshold reduced to 4 per cent” is bizarre when it means they need to more than double their support.

I have to presume this is not a stuffup or deliberate single party promotion and it’s just multiple incompetencies, but if NZ Herald wants credibility with it’s new online offerings it needs to get the basics right.