At the time of the June 2004 local elections, I felt that the potential longer-term significance of their results was generally underestimated. For I believe that the votes cast in that election, in which Fianna Fáil secured only one-eighth more votes than Fine Gael, were a more genuine reflection of the electorate's underlying feelings than was likely to be the case in subsequent polls that asked for people's general election voting intentions, writes Garret FitzGerald
Why? In a local election, the issue of whether an opposition can defeat a government does not arise. If subsequently voters are asked about their voting intentions in a forthcoming general election, they may in some cases be diverted from following their voting inclinations by a fatalistic belief that the government cannot be defeated.
Between summer 2004 and the start of this year, the anti-Government vote was, I believed, artificially depressed by this factor. However, as we came nearer to the general election and as the vulnerability of the Government to a possible defeat became clearer, this factor would fade, and voters would come to feel encouraged to follow what had been their inclination since at least 2004. The poll published in The Irish Timesyesterday showed that whereas until recently almost twice as many thought that Fianna Fáil, rather than the Opposition, would form the next government, by this week fractionally more people had come to believe that Fine Gael and Labour would do so.
Moreover, to the extent that the post-2002 voter irritation about having been misled during that election campaign may have faded during 2005 and 2006, that factor was always likely to be replaced gradually by a somewhat different negative reaction - a feeling that after 10 years the Government had just been too long in office.
Those are the reasons why I felt that public opinion would eventually settle once again to a pattern very close to its state at the time of the local elections three years ago. And, as a glance at the table below will demonstrate, when allowance is made for the smaller vote for Independents in Dáil elections, this is what has in fact happened.
The quite remarkable feature of this table is that it shows that since constituency polls for this election started to be undertaken professionally on behalf of regional newspapers last February, the cumulative results of that series, together with six national polls taken since mid-April, are extraordinarily consistent with each other, and also with the results of the 2004 local elections, adjusted for the Independent candidate factor.
The fact is that all such polls are subject to a statistical margin of error of three percentage points - and even more in the case of one poll out of every 20. And the table below shows that only two of the 49 poll figures for party figures for the seven national polls depart by more than 2½ percentage points from the average of these figures.
None of the minor ups and downs in the polls, of which the media has made so much, has any statistical significance: all have lain within the polling margin of error.
Even before the Dáil was dissolved voters had effectively made up their minds; at this stage the only thing that could - but probably will not - divert them from their intentions would be a swing caused by possible reactions to Mr Ahern's publication of his explanation for those puzzling events of 1994. That affair has introduced a slight element of uncertainty into an election that has otherwise followed a fairly steady trajectory.
If the votes were to be cast along the lines suggested in the last line of this table, what would be the outcome in seats?
Because our PR system as it is applied to 43 constituencies is only very crudely proportional in terms of the seats that votes yield to each party, this is not a question to which anyone can give a reliable answer.
For example, in both 1992 and 1997 the PDs secured precisely 4.68 per cent of the first-preference vote - but in the first of those two elections they secured 10 seats, while in the second they won only four!
And in 2002 Fine Gael - which, like Fianna Fáil, in seven elections between 1981 and 1997 on average secured 3 per cent more seats than votes - actually ended up winning 4 per cent less seats than votes in the last election.
That gave the party 11or 12 less seats than it could reasonably have expected with its vote, whilst Fianna Fáil won seven more seats than it might have expected to secure. Thus the differential between Fianna Fáil and the two main Opposition parties turned out to be 18 to 19 seats greater than past electoral experience and normal proportionality would have suggested.
All one can say about the outcome of this election is that on the basis of the average seat/vote ratio of the preceding 20 years, 36 per cent of the vote should yield Fianna Fáil about 64 to 65 seats, while Fine Gael and Labour between them should win about 70. (A constituency-by-constituency analysis might, however, give the Opposition a somewhat higher figure than 70).
But even if the electorate votes along the lines suggested in the table, please don't count on those being the actual strengths of the three main parties when the Dáil reassembles!