Welcome to Irish Polling Report

Dotski here.  If you’ve found this blog, you’re probably a regular on politics.ie.  I’ve been known to post there a bit, particularly following Irish opinion polls, when I crunch the figures through my trusty spreadsheet.  While I’ll keep posting there, it occurred to me during the recent (2010) UK General Election that a dedicated site for discussion of polls (as opposed to slagging off each other’s parties), along the lines of the excellent UK Polling Report,  would be a good thing.  So rather than wait for someone else to do it, I thought I would myself.

While I’ll be running the spreadsheet simulations to calculate the number of seats each party is likely to win based on each reputable poll, I’ll also be interested in any ‘internal polls’ that people get their hands on, so if any readers get their hands on these, please let me know, and we can consider the implications they’d have in that constituency if true, and what sort of national figures they would be consistent with.   While many of these are notoriously unreliable, so is 99% of the internet, and unlike most of that they can be quite fun!  And genuine ones, in fairness, often are interesting in that they can indicate what parties are likely to do in terms of candidate strategy, particularly when national polls are indicating figures very different to any previous General Election (I write this in August 2010).

So what are the rules for anyone wishing to post?  Well, no political point scoring.  Politics.ie is a perfectly good enough a place for that.  The idea of this space is proper analysis of polls.  Also, play the ball, not the poster.  If you think someone has made a crazy extrapolation, say why, don’t say it’s because they are clinically insane (even if you know it’s true.  Actually, especially then).

I’ve no idea yet if this will be read by many (edit: 6 weeks on it is, which is much appreciated!), but I would hope that, particularly as we approach the next election, this will be a useful place for people trying to work out what will happen in what promises to be the most interesting – and unpredictable – Irish election since the 1940s.  You can post anonymously, but if you’re a politics.ie regular it’d be nice if you used that name here.  If you’d like to contact me, you can get me at irishpollingreport@gmail.com

While there’s an archive of posts on the right hand side, you might be interested in the following posts/threads;

My most recent constituency-by-constituency analysis based on national polls

Analysis of constituency polls in Dublin SE Donegal SW, Cork SC, Cork NW, and Dun Laoghaire

There also stuff in there specifically on the relative merits of the polling companies, notably the RedC/ MRBI and Landsowne discrepancy, and somewhat odd aspects of Quantum Research’s work.

And for those who just think the polls must be wrong, because there will always be ‘local factors’ and rural issues that make big changes impossible, you may find this interesting.

So, in summary, I hope you enjoy the posts, that anyone who can will share interesting analysis and information, and spread the word!

Dotski.