'Sunday Independent' journalists ignore their own poll findings shock!

THREE POLLS into the election campaign and what have we discovered? Sinn Féin are holding the gains made in 2010 and that many journalists offer interesting interpretations of the poll figures that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

It was welcome to see the Sunday Independent to park their in-house Quantum Research polling, which isn’t methodologically on a par with the Red C, Ipsos MRBI or the MillwardBrown Lansdowne polls which have now appeared in last Sunday’s Independent and today’s Irish Independent.

In recent weeks the Sunday Independent have been running front-page articles on polls based on just 200 respondents.

MillwardBrown Lansdowne had carried out a poll for TV3 in September and now have published three others since. The results are summarised below. You can see one clear fact, which is that compared to February 2010 Sinn Féin is the only party whose voter support has increased.

MillwardBrown Lansdowne opinion polls 2010 to 2011

12/2/10            24/9/10            30/1/11            2/2/11

Fianna Fáil      27%                 22%                 16%                 16%

Fine Gael         34%                 30%                 34%                 30%

Labour             19%                 35%                 24%                 24%

Sinn Féin         8%                   4%                   10%                 13%

Greens             2%                   2%                   1%                   1%

For the Sunday Independent there were two fixations: one was leadership issues and the second was Sinn Féin.

The Sunday Independent found it impossible to say that all the party leaders saw reduced or static satisfaction ratings. Instead, the front-page headline proclaimed:

FG, despite Enda, may form government alone.

Wow! This would mean that Fine Gael were not on 34% but possibly 44% and would surpass their highest-ever election result, which was 39.2% in November 1982.

Reality was being suspended as a strap to the headline proclaimed:

No real ‘Martin Bounce’, Gilmore appeal wanes, Gerry Adams factor is holding Sinn Fein back.

Conspiracy theorists among you will no doubt believe that it is not an accident that the Sunday Indo managed to get a whole sentence in about Sinn Féin and all of it negative. How could you think such a thing?

Maybe it was the inside articles on the party in the paper. On Page 4 it was “Aggressive fund-raising drive boost SF war chest." On Page 12, Eilis O’Hanlon wrote that Sinn Féin is "far from bullet-proof on economy” – and yes she does attack the party and Gerry Adams. And, no, Eilis doesn’t forget to mention the war as many times as possible. Good work, Eilis. She is the Ryan Giggs of the Indo – perennial and always dependable.

Eamon Delaney tells how poor old Labour are under attack with a strapline that says:

The party’s hopes for an easy win have been dashed by a surge for Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance.

Eoghan Harris too gets on to the predictable fare of republican bashing.

The Sunday Business Post Red C poll has similar results to today’s MillwardBrown Lansdowne poll, with little change from December.

Red C Sunday Business Post poll 30^th January 2011

Fianna Fail      16%     -1%

Fine Gael         33%     -1%

Labour             21%     -1%

Sinn Féin         13%     -1%

Green Party     2%       0%

Perhaps the most important point in the weekend polls was the finding that 66% of those surveyed are worried about paying household bills, 78% are concerned about the reduction in the standard of living, 39% were worried about losing their jobs, and 25% concerned about losing their home.