Poll crazy

WITH the temporary stay of execution granted on Brian Cowen’s leadership of Fianna Fáil after his vote of confidence move, the election campaign can begin (of course, that’s if the whole House of Cards hasn’t collapsed between me typing this and it rolling off the press over 24 hours). But it’s not the posters, leaflets, canvasses of shopping malls, church gates, GAA clubs, I’m talking about - ‘It’s the polls, stupid!’ Get ready to go poll crazy.
In the run-up to the 2007 election there were 18 polls between January and voting on May 25th. Eight of these were published between the 5th and 24th of May. So get ready for a poll a week between now and election day.
Already this year there have been polls not just on the coming Leinster House election but also dealing with the likely presidential election in November, abortion and attitudes towards Sinn Féin in government.
The Sunday Independent pseudo polls conducted by Quantum Research, an in-house call centre, have been ongoing. In recent weeks they have published results of surveys with just 200 (yes, two hundred) people on ‘Golfgate’ and who should lead Fianna Fáil.
Why pseudo? The Quantum polls don’t meet the methodology for sampling set down by ESOMAR, the European Society for Marketing and Research Professionals.
The polling companies who meet the ESOMAR criteria and are likely to feature in election polling include Red C, who have conducted polls for the Sunday Business Post, News of the World, the Sun, Sunday Times and Paddy Power bookmakers.
Ipsos MRBI usually poll for the Irish Times.
MillwardBrown Lansdowne are the merger of two Irish research firms, Lansdowne and IMS, with an international partner and have been commissioned in the past by the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent to carry out political surveys.
In September, MillwardBrown published a poll for TV3, which excluding ‘Don’t knows’ had Sinn Fein at 4%. Even before recent increases in the party’s vote share, this would still be a low estimate and a figure not repeated in any poll since. The margin of error was plus or minus 3%.
The newest news media outlets to commission polls in Ireland are the papers of Rupert Murdoch’s News International and they have been busy with multiple polls across the Sun, News of the World and Sunday Times newspapers.
Sometimes it seems that it’s actually one poll spread across three papers. For example, in November, the Sun and Sunday Times published separately results of a poll conducted by Red C over November 1st to 3rd. The Sun poll was on who would make the best choice to be Taoiseach. They had conducted a similar poll in July. They also had questions on the impact of the recession on consumers.
The Sunday Times poll had questions on water charges and property tax. It’s clear that the papers are spreading the costs of polls to generate content for their papers. On December 5th, the Sunday Times had a story about who would be the best leader of Fine Gael. Two days before, the Sun had run a poll story with questions a possible Taoiseach and on party support. Sinn Féin was on 16%.
The last new entrant into the poll arena is Paddy Power, who again have been using Red C. Paddy Power commissioned the only poll I know of on the outcome of the Donegal South-West by-election, showing that Sinn Féin would top the poll.
So with 10 to 12 weeks to election day, strap your self in for a lot more polling. Our An Phoblacht Online website will be running a poll watch to try and keep up with it all so all the latest news on polls could be just one click away.

Who’s who in polling

Ipsos MRBI
MRBI have a long relationship with The Irish Times and expect at least three polls between now and election day.
Watch out too for the selective interpretations of Political Correspondent Stephen Collins.
Do your own parsing of the poll numbers - it’s better.
In May 2008, Collins reported on a Lisbon Treaty MRBI poll. Those voting ‘Yes’ had increased 9% from 26% to 35%, while the ‘No’ vote rose 8% from 10% to 18%, prompting Collins to write “Support for the Lisbon Treaty has increased significantly” and ignore the fact the ‘No’ vote was increasing too. In the next poll, the ‘Yes’ vote was at 30% with the ‘No’ vote up 17% to 35%.
Ipsos MRBI methodology has got simpler this year and they offer two sets of poll figures; it used to be three. Confusing indeed.

Red C
In 2006, The Sunday Business Post began a series of tracker polls carried out by Red C, usually nine or ten a year.
The changes between them are usually smaller than the quarterly MRBI polls but a good guide to trends.
Red C have become the flavour of the moment with commissions from News International and Paddy Power bookmakers.

MillwardBrown Lansdowne
The Irish Indepndent and Sunday Independent used MillwadBrown in 2007 and might again. They have polled for TV3 also.
In 2002, an IMS survey (Lansdowne and IMS merged with Millward in 2009) had Fianna Fáil at 50% of the vote. They got 41%. Oops.

Quantum Research
This is the in-house research carried out by the Sunday Independent with questionable methodology.
Good only for a Sunday morning coffee break and about as representative as the Marian Finucane Show’s guest list.