I tell you what, I reckon the polling industry could do itself a major favour and launch a fairly significant branding campaign to try and educate us as to how their industry works, whether it is remotely accurate, worth dealing with, and whether we should be giving it the sort of coverage we do, especially around election time.

Firstly, there are things like TVNZ's Vote Compass which is not polling as most of us would understand it. It is simply a tool you can dabble with as many times as you like. It is representative of nothing, and it's certainly not a poll or a snapshot of anything other than those who want to fill in questionnaires. Nothing wrong with that, just not a poll.

A poll, for what it's worth to me, is a random sample of at least 1000 called out of the blue and where information is gleaned. It is statistically representative of the country's population.

Horizon Research, which are often quoted as a poll ,entice you to join, they offer prizes to join, and you're part of a club. That's  not polling either, but they would argue it is. The only people joining are those who can be bothered, motivated, or have the time. That’s not truly representative of the population, their lives, and outlooks.

Then there are the polls from vested interests of which we have two this week on cannabis. And guess what the results are?

Colmar Brunton and Reid Research, who work for TVNZ and Newshub, had broadly similar results on cannabis. The no vote is leading by quite a margin. So much so, even if the undecided voters all went yes, yes still wouldn’t win.

Those to me are proper polls. Participants don’t join, the purchaser of the poll has no vested interest.

And yet Helen Clark and her foundation and a therapeutics company have a poll each this week also on cannabis with, remarkably, the yes vote leading. How is it possible to get the result that would just happen to suit your client? And a result the opposite of the other polls in the market?

There are so many results, numbers, and indications that don’t even come close to matching up or showing a trend that the punter is surely left bewildered.

We need a standard, a recognised, accepted, and regulated methodology in which the starting point is always the same. Because if we all start in the same place, hopefully the vast variation disappears, polls that aren't polls are no longer pedaled as polls, and those who want to buy numbers to suit their cause will, at least, be discouraged knowing they're taking a risk in shelling out money to find something they don't want to see.

Yes, we could say bugger the polls, and we have. And yet they are an industry, they drive debate ,they shift mood, they win or lose races, and they shouldn’t, especially not if they're not legit.