If you are Finance Minister you need to be able to spell your name correctly

This afternoon Finance Minister Bill English set up an unscientific internet poll on capital gains tax on his website. He would have expected resounding opposition, because he tweeted all his Twitter followers, the majority of whom would be Nat supporters, encouraging them to vote.

But they didn’t, at least initially – the reason being that English spelled his name / url wrongly in his tweet:

So at one stage support in English’s poll for a capital gains tax was running at 86% – because Nat supporters didn’t pick up English’s mistake and ran to a dead link but a good number of Green and Labour supporters did pick it up.

Now the Nats have finally got their act together and English has tweeted again with his name spelled correctly, the margin is closing – but it is still 60% in favour of a capital gains tax, with over 1300 votes in.