Do voters have a choice? The polls point in one direction: Fianna Fáil will dominate the incoming administration, very possibly as a single party government.
But the polls are not the election. Tomorrow, every voter has the freedom to exercise the franchise according to his or her personal preferences.
Votes are ideally cast on the merits of individual candidates in each constituency. That remains the democratic ideal. But in reality, voters make a complex adjudication that involves many factors - ideology, values, party leadership, personal interests and so on. What does the electorate have to decide, therefore, tomorrow?
The principal focus in this election is, and has been from Day One, the economy. How is it to be sustained and how are its fruits to be distributed and allocated? The State is poorly run in many of its essentials - health, education, the environment, criminal justice, transport, infrastructural development. There are great inequalities of wealth and opportunity and - by some analyses - the gap between richer and poorer is widening. The issue is not whether these are desirable - nobody argues that they are. The issue is which party or combination is more likely to alleviate them, while sustaining good levels of economic growth?
There is very rough water ahead. Tax revenues are seriously adrift from target and Government spending is spiralling upwards at a rate of 22 per cent in the first four months of this year. Inflation is twice the EU average. Public-service pay expectations through benchmarking are high and will have to be addressed within months. Interest rates will probably rise later in the year. But infrastructure and services must have more investment. Crucial decisions will have to be made if the economic gains of recent years are not to be dissipated. Government will have to be both wise and resolute.
The Opposition parties appear to have failed to convince the voters that they are better fitted to meet these tasks than Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil may be venal. It may have presided over a widening of the gap between rich and poor. Its track record of competence may be spotty. But the public says, through the polls, that Bertie and Fianna Fáil are well ahead of anything else on offer.
People are motivated by holding on to the gains which have been made over the past five years. This is understandable and great good has come from our economic progress. But a strong culture of individualism is in the ascendant in Ireland. It has fuelled the boom but it has a side which is selfish, acquisitive and indifferent. It comprises no minor part of the wave of support which appears certain to bring Fianna Fáil back to office in the 29th Dáil.
Would a coalition be better - perhaps a renewed alliance with the PDs or with the Greens? It is possible for individual voters to use the franchise tactically to this end. Voters might do well to ponder what might now be the state of public life had the party been alone in office in the lifetime of the previous Dáil. Fianna Fáil in power, unchecked by any other influence, is a prospect which many will view with the gravest apprehension. Think - and vote - carefully.