Tomás Ó Flatharta

Reading this article is refreshing –

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/ah-these-polls-you-bring-us-surprisingly-consistent/

if you check out various articles on the political reform.ie site – for example :

http://politicalreform.ie/2011/02/05/red-csunday-business-post-seat-estimates-based-on-kavanagh-poll-analysis/

You will see that most analysts who have studied statistics agree that the variation in reliable polls is within the margin of error.

Hindsight usually brings us close to perfection, we get the benefit of 20-20 vision.

If you examine the trends before the 2007 general election it looks clear that, in the last week of the campaign, Fianna Fáil benefited from a late swing, fuelled by fear of the future.

Check out the predictions of most credible analysts who got most seat numbers right – but Fianna Fáil did better, while Sinn Féin and the assorted others performed worse.

http://electionsireland.org/results/general/30thdail/predictions.cfm

I was stunned by the poor Sinn Féin performance in 2007 – thinking that they might use an improved mandate to show, in their own words, they were “ready for government”.

Instead the Adams-led party sowed doubts among its working-class supporters – a trend continued in the 2009 Local and European Elections when the Socialist Party’s Joe Higgins, with 12.2% of the first preference vote, took a Euro-Parliament seat at the expense of Sinn Féin’s Mary-Lou McDonald (and Fianna Fáil’s Eoin Ryan).

What will happen in 2011? – we will all know after February 25.