Lightning strikes twice for ‘Noeleen’ in TG4 poll

Bradley Bytes – A Sort of Political Column with Dara Bradley 

Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Except for pre-election opinion polls in Galway West.

A poll for TG4 sent a bolt of lightning through the Dáil election campaign locally in 2016 when it predicted the demise of sitting TD Noel Grealish.

It was wrong. ‘Noeleen’ got 7% in the poll and 11% on polling day – enough to comfortably retain his seat.

Fast forward to 2020 and it was a case of Déjà vu. Grealish polled 7% in the pre-election survey conducted by Ipso/Mrbi for TG4 – in the heal of the hunt, he got 13.3% of first preference votes, up 2%. The Grealish camp was delighted to be written off by a poll for the second election running – it fit into his campaign narrative that the ‘Meeja’ and everyone else was ‘out to get him’ over the ‘Oughterard controversy’ and it galvanised his support base. Now the pollsters are left wondering how they got it so wrong – again.

Poll was poles apart from the actual result

As well as Grealish, here are some of the notable anomalies between the TG4 poll and the actual election result: It had Sinn Féin’s Mairéad Farrell on 7%, half of the first preference share she actually got (14%) . . . For more Bradley Bytes see this week’s Galway City Tribune