MEDIA WATCH: Time was when opinion polls were largely confined to the national media, but now, local newspapers and radio stations are in on the act and surveys dominate regional coverage of the election this week.
We have had custard-pies in this election, but the Echo and South Leinster Advertiser offers a pie-chart on its front page to illustrate the results of the Echo newspapers-South East Radio poll of the five-seat Wexford constituency.
The poll shows Fianna Fáil taking one of Fine Gael's two seats. This would give Fianna Fáil three TDs, with Labour's Brendan Howlin holding his place in the Dáil.
Perhaps more surprising is the prediction that the incoming Fine Gael TD will be newcomer Paul Kehoe rather than sitting deputy Michael D'Arcy or the formidable MEP for Leinster, Avril Doyle.
The expected FF winners are sitting TDs John Browne and Hugh Byrne as well as county hurling manager Tony Dempsey.
If the poll is to be believed, Fine Gael is on "a miserable 15.15 per cent" compared to 52.26 per cent for the Soldiers of Destiny.
There's better news for the main opposition party in an adjoining constituency. The Wicklow People publishes a Lansdowne Market Research poll predicting that Fine Gael's Billy Timmins will fight off the challenge by Labour newcomer Nicky Kelly and that Wicklow will return the five sitting deputies to Dáil Éireann.
The Longford Leader is predicting the political demise of Louis Belton and leaving Denis Naughten as the sole Fine Gael standard-bearer in the Longford-Roscommon four-seater.
Not only would the departure of the dapper Mr Belton mean a decline in sartorial standards in Leinster House but it would leave Longford with only one TD - probably Fianna Fáil's Peter Kelly - while the other three would be Roscommon-based. Don't let it happen, warns the paper in an editorial headed: "Longford people should vote for their own."
The Cavan-Monaghan constituency is gripped by election fever, judging from the number of political advertisements in the local Anglo-Celt newspaper.
The democratic process has so far failed to inspire the leader-writer of the Western People, who complains: "So far this is a dreary and very dead general election campaign." Parties and candidates are accused of "trading on an unashamedly open policy of trying to create envy in people, to convince them they have not got enough, they have been denied and that they can get them more and more".
However, the paper's election analyst, Michael Commins, warns there is "a fair degree of restlessness out there, something lurking in the tall grass that could yet manifest itself in various constituencies". He suggests we may be about to see a resurgence of conservative religious sentiment.
The Meath Chronicle in an editorial questions the wisdom of going hi-tech: "Taking the dramatic element away from the count centre will be sorely missed by all those who have been witness to exciting contests down the years in Meath and elsewhere."