DRAPIER/An Insider's Guide to Politics: As these words are being read, Drapier will be in a sweaty count centre hoping all goes well but full of all the nerves, tension and apprehension which his old friend, Dr Moosajee Bhamjee, has described so well in this paper. On days like this Drapier envies Moosajee and others like him who decided that life after politics has its compensations.
That mood rarely lasts long and next week, after a few hours sleep, the old zest and enthusiasm will be back. And it had better be because for all parties, in the words of Bertie Ahern, there is an awful lot still to be done.
Drapier has said more than once that health would not be the deciding issue for voters, arguing that the competing claims of all parties would probably cancel each other out, that in a sense all parties lack credibility on the issue and that there is no real possibility of any party scoring a big hit or landing a knock-out.
Why then did health top the list in all polls? Geraldine Kennedy got it right last Sunday on RTÉ, when she put it down to an overdose of political correctness. When asked, people felt obliged to give the answer expected, the compassionate answer, health - rather than the real answer, which was money - their own money, in their own pockets. Because that was the central issue from start to finish and for many voters it was the key deciding issue.
But if so, why did the debate on the state of the public finances never take off? Richard Bruton said it was the rugby ball that never got out of the ruck and remained well and truly buried.
It was not as if we were not being told often and loudly. The George Lees and Moore McDowells talked eloquently on the subject. There was unanimity among the professional economists - a rare enough thing in itself - and given the starkness of figures there could hardly be a second opinion.
But the issue never took off. Either people did not think it mattered, or that a change of government would make any real difference. Or it maybe, as Drapier suspects, that many people regarded such talk as being too gloomy - almost in bad taste. People were still in Charlie McCreevy's party mood.
It is going to matter soon enough. There will be bills to be paid and paid quickly. The health boards are already preparing for cutbacks. Benchmarking still has to come on tap and there are increasing indications that we are less and less competitive and that inflation is becoming a serious problem once again.
The point is a simple one, raised more in puzzlement than anger. Whatever government comes in, expectations will have been raised, and promises will have to be kept. The day has long gone when Sean Lemass could, with a straight face after an election, say that no one expected election promises to be kept. They were just that, election promises.
Today we all expect election promises to be kept and in fairness most recent governments have tried to keep them, even when it might have been in the better interests of the country to bin them as Lemass so casually did.
All of this brings Drapier back to the question of the party manifestos. For the most part, now that the smoke of battle has cleared, it can be said the manifestos were thoughtful and well worked out. They were trying to address real problems, but inevitably every problem requires a solution and every solution needs more money.
Drapier just wonders if we have reached the time when we should look again at manifesto politics. It won't be easy. We are all lobbied ceaselessly by interest groups and regional groups and most manifestos try to cater for some, if not all of these. Then each front bench spokesperson or minister wants to get their bag of goodies into the manifesto as well.
The result frequently is overload. Too many promises are made. The problem is that the public and the media expect us to lay out our stalls before an election with all of the details and all of the costings. How else can they choose between us? We could all do with rethinking on this issue and perhaps more restraint might be helpful.
One new factor in this campaign was the prevalence of the e-mails. If Drapier is in any way typical his e-mail was flooded on a daily basis and all required immediate replies. Drapier has no doubts some of the queries were from cranks or designed to distract him.
Whether this will make much of a difference is hard to tell. Drapier certainly did not take any chances and made sure all got an answer. Whether they were the right answers only time will tell.
On the polls, only time will tell if they were right or wrong. Indeed, by this morning we should have a good idea as to whether the new method adopted by both MRBI and IMS was as accurate as the old one. But for us candidates that question is academic. The only poll that counts is unfurling before us..
Drapier has strong views on how some of the local polls were used. In some cases methodology was dodgy, in one case the results were doctored to make a political point. In Drapier's view there is a responsibility on the media to draw up a protocol so that we can be assured of the competence and honesty of those who take the polls and be sure that all the relevant data is published.
But that's that. It is time to go back to the tallymen. If Noel Dempsey has his way they may not be around next time.