Pinches of salt needed as polls can tell porkies!

Bradley Bytes – A Sort of Political Column with Dara Bradley 

TG4 has commissioned an opinion poll for the Galway West constituency; let’s hope it’s more accurate than its last one.
The Irish language TV station, based in Baile na hAbhann, has asked Ipsos/MRBI to carry out the Galway West poll, as well as polls in the two other counties which have large Gaeltacht areas, Donegal and Kerry.
Opinion polls aren’t cheap if they’re done properly, and so TG4 must be commended for investing in them as part of its ‘Vóta 2020’ coverage. The station’s current affairs team will be live from Galway next Tuesday, January 28, to analyse, discuss and dissect the results.
As with all polls, the results should come with a health warning. Remember the RTÉ/TG4 exit poll last year for the European Elections predicted Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan would lose his seat in Midlands-North West; and it had the Green Party’s Saoirse McHugh a shoe-in for a seat? Wrong and wrong again.
In the 2016 General Election in Galway West, Ipsos/MRBI carried out a poll for TG4, which was also inaccurate. Though it was wrong for most candidates, it was spectacularly so for Noel Grealish, whom it put at 7%, in danger of losing his seat. He actually polled 11% and cruised in.
The reverse was true for Fine Gael senator John O’Mahony – he was at 11% in the poll and got just 7% on the day. Some of the predictions were within the margin of error but many candidates argued afterwards that the poll was so off that it influenced voters – for instance, Fianna Fáil’s John Connolly was a no-hoper according to the poll and he would argue that many FF die-hards switched their vote from him to Éamon Ó Cuív to secure at least one seat for the party. Pinches of salt at the ready!

For more election-special Bradley Bytes see this week’s Galway City Tribune