This week's Midweek MediaWatch quoted comments made about political polls on the Newsable podcast. David Farrar of polling company Curia - which produces polls for the National party - admitted that poll results released close to an election can influence the election results:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018903888/midweek-mediawatch-polling-death-spiral-and-sandwich-slump
Surely it's unacceptable for any business activity funded by political parties and media organisations to distort election outcomes?
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I've argued for years that we need to ban the publication of poll results for at least a few months before people start voting. Farrar's admission is the smoking gun that proves this is important.
Imagine if people's votes were determined primarily by the policies the various parties support, rather than their relative position in the polls. Maybe MMP might finally start producing representative governments, as it was intended to?
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