State Of The Polls

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18 thoughts on “State Of The Polls

  1. Jeffrey

    The Greens will be up until the first hike in Carbon Tax then it will be back to the rabbit hole.

  2. dhod

    I’d like to think some of FG’s decline is thanks to Maria Bailey and your man Farrell.

  3. BS

    fantastic! FF and Greens to ring in the new decade in 2020. Keep the housing crisis ticking along, whilst also taxing everyone who doesnt live and work in an urban centre to within an inch of their already stretched paycheck.

    Bang-bust-repeat

  4. PaddyM

    The sound of Blueshirt toys being thrown out of the pram.

    A couple of points:

    1. As George alluded to above, the *local* election result for FG was 25% and 23% is close enough to this given the margin of error or even minor slippage in support. The local elections have generally been a better guide to the following general election over the last couple of cycles – the European elections are much more of a personality/ego contest.

    2. Dramatic changes in support over a short period in time do not *in themselves* invalidate poll results. B&A does have a record of these kind of shifts from one month to the next that don’t show up in other pollsters’ results, though. However, B&A is the one polling company that publishes the full polling figures, unadjusted as well as adjusted.

    3. Of the pollsters, MRBI seems to have had the best record of calling it right over the years, with MillwardBrown next (though with a tendency to over-allocate to SF and under-allocate to independents), and RedC and B&A coming next (we’ve still to see IrelandThinks tested in a general election). FGers including the ones in the original Twitter thread seem to have enormous faith in RedC, mainly I suspect because its model tends to overpoll them, but it got the exit poll badly wrong this time and too much of the narrative ended up being shaped by its errors. B&A did a rather better job for RTÉ in 2016.

  5. eoin

    The point about the reliability of B&A polls is certainly interesting. Before the European and local elections three weeks ago, B&A was regularly putting SF at 19-21%. SF actually won 9.48% (or 9%, rounded) of the local election votes. How could B&A have gotten that so wrong? These opinion polls usually have a 3% margin of error, so the Shinners were probably thinking they’d get 16-24%. To then get 9%, almost half the lower adjusted opinion poll %, tends to show the pollsters are not really doing a good job at all.

    1. Cian

      I think the problem is people didn’t get out and vote.
      The polls seem to consistently be told by 75-80% of people saying they will vote…. but we only got 50% on the day.

      Yes, the polling companies are getting it wrong – perhaps the need to better assess who will actually bother to vote.

      1. Cian

        In this recent poll 83.4% said they would definitely vote.
        Turnout in General Elections tends to be in the 60-70%

  6. Vanessa the Holy Face of Frilly Keane

    Ah here
    Have we not learned that this Polling carry-on is a racket
    There are only two types of polls we should give any notion to
    Internal Polling, the ones the local Party Machines collect. The very ones Phoenix/ Goldhawk seem to have no problems getting a hold of

    And the polls announced by Returning Officers

    The latter imo never get the respect they deserve
    This recent one, as presented above
    Following a clear indication of who’s who and where they’re all at
    Barely 2 weeks ago
    Being a prime example

    I fully appreciate that a General brings out a very different Voting criteria from the voter

    But seriously folks
    Ye’re only encouraging an industry that serves no-one only themselves

    For an even clearer example if how useless these polling companies are
    Look at the exits for the Divorce amendment Referendum put before us
    And look at the actual call
    The margin of error in a simple yes no was even a cod

  7. Gabby

    The centrist electorate remains fixed on centrism. No political change here, no changing the elements of Irish politics.

  8. Thomas Murphy

    Maybe our grandparents had a better spin on things even if they civil warred each other to within an inch of their lives. Small houses, big families. No money to be throwing at banks for death pledges. The Celtic Tiger was like cocaine to their grand children and now we’re in debt for the next two or three generations. We get the politicians we deserve.

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