Polling expert Jack Jones tells Vincent Browne why large parties are spending €1.4m on research
Over one third of the electorate are uninterested in politics, according to market research recently conducted by MRBI. One in four were unable to name correctly even a single TD in their constituency and a further 10 per cent who did name correctly a TD did not know to which party the TD belonged, according to Mr Jack Jones, chairman of MRBI.
Mr Jones is the most experienced analyst of political opinion polling, having been engaged by the then Fine Gael-Labour Coalition government in 1977 to poll privately for them once the election was called. He recalls going to the Fine Gael and Labour strategists, all of whom were confident the Coalition would be returned, and telling them that Fianna Fáil was showing at 59 per cent.
"They were able to bring that back to 51 per cent but they knew from then that the game was up."
He believes there remains an outside chance that Fianna Fáil will win an overall majority in Friday's election, although polls tend to overstate support for that party. Political opinion polling nowadays is hazardous, he says.
"In the last election, 35 per cent did not turn out but in the opinion polls, only 15 per cent admit to be undecided. Therefore a further 20 per cent of the electorate that are telling the pollsters how they will vote will, in fact, not vote at all."
He believes that even with the simulated ballot paper presented by the polling companies to a sample of the electorate, the strength of Fianna Fáil is still overstated.
On the day of the last election, MRBI polled people who had voted and who said they were going to vote later in the day.
The sample of the people who had voted showed Fianna Fáil getting 39 per cent support (precisely the percentage vote achieved by the party in the election), however of those who said they were going to vote, 47 per cent said they were going to vote Fianna Fáil.
He cites another reason why the polls overstate Fianna Fáil's first preference support: the high number of candidates running in the election. In 1997 there were 480 candidates, including a high number of Independents and this deflected votes away from the main parties on the first count, votes which subsequently returned to the parties on later counts. While this is less of a factor in the current election because there are only 460 candidates, it will still be a distorting element.
He believes that Fianna Fáil's first count vote will be 42 to 44 per cent - but it will get a disproportionately high return of seats, up to 80, enough to form a government with the support of Independents, in large part because there are 141 candidates not members of the main parties.
He believes Fine Gael will do better than the polls suggest, in part because of the overestimation of the Fianna Fáil support and in part because although its first preference percentage vote may be down, it will benefit from the elimination of Independents and candidates from the smaller parties.
He complains about the way that the results of market research are misrepresented at times in the media. "Suggestions that an overall majority for Fianna Fáil is a certainty are absurd. They may get that but one cannot deduce that outcome from the polls as a certainty," he says.
He also complains about the manner in which constituency polls are interpreted. "Polls with sample base for 400 can be quite reliable in individual constituencies as a barometer of how the first preference vote will go but the suggestion that one can rely on such polls to say how the votes on the third, fourth or fifth count will go is ridiculous, you simply can't tell and the use of the polls to say where the last seat will go is grossly misleading."
Asked how accurate the polls had been in predicting the outcomes of the last five elections, he replies: "They have not been as accurate in the last three elections as they were in the previous ten. In 1997, the MRBI poll was out by 5 percentage points on the first preference vote of Fianna Fáil.
The big problem is the large proportion of people who are disinterested in politics. You simply cannot rely on what they say on how they will vote, that is if they vote at all".
Asked whether the polls were of any use if there was an error factor of 5 percentage points, he replies: "Even though we were out 5 per cent, my written conclusions were in '97 correct. Fianna Fáil formed the Government, as I said it would, and the same happened in 1992.
"So, even though you may be out three of four points in terms of the actual figures, the conclusion a researcher draws from his experience will normally be the right conclusion."
He says one of the striking developments of Irish politics in the last few decades was the failure of Fine Gael to recover from the rise of the Progressive Democrats in the 1987 election.
The Fine Gael vote dropped from 39 per cent in November 1982 to 27 per cent in 1987 and since then the party has never reached even the 30 per cent mark.
While the PDs have declined, other parties have come in to mop up that vote, which Fine Gael has been unable to regain. Although the PDs were initially made up of former Fianna Fáil people, it was from Fine Gael that they attracted their initial vote.
He speculates perhaps Fine Gael did best when it was left of centre and that since it has moved to the right, following the retirement of Garret FitzGerald, its support has declined.
He estimates that about €1.4 million is now being spent by the political parties on opinion polling and says this gives them a very significant advantage over parties that are unable to afford market research.
Asked if he thought there was an unfairness in the richer parties having such an advantage over the poorer parties he replies: "That's life".