New Sunday Times/B&A poll September 21, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
Political party support
The poll indicates that Fine Gael is at 25% down two points since the last poll.
Labour is suggested to have 11% support, up four points.
Fianna Fáil is said to be at 21% down three points.
The poll suggests that support for Sinn Féin is up two points to 18%.
Independents and others were recorded to have 26% support.
Well, well, well. This seems to align fairly closely with the last RedC poll, does it not?
The SBP/RedC poll saw the following:
Fine Gael 27 (-1%), Fianna Fáil 23 (+1%), Independents and Others 23 (+2%), Sinn Féin 17 (NC), Labour 10 (-2%).
As for the Seanad, it’s still toast, and the figures are within 1% in all respects of the SBP/RedC poll. Turnout will be all.
Seanad referendum
When the “Don’t Knows” are excluded and voters were asked about the future of the Seanad, the poll suggested that 60% were in favour of its abolition.
The poll indicates that 40% are against the abolition.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
B&A’s results are now on their site and reveal they’ve had to weight IND/OTH and Labour up while weighting Fianna Fail and Fine Gael down with the Greens and Sinn Fein roughly being in-line with their 2011 results (page 68). Potential for higher error in the ones that have been subject to weightings. Also there is error potential in the SF numbers due to the likelihood to vote filter which can also be seen on page 68.
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Interesting. What’s your feeling, too great a weighting for Ind/Oth and SF? That might account for the discrepancy between ST and SBP polls in regard to the former, but the latter are very close.
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They have to weight though as if they didn’t the poll wouldn’t be representative because of the tendency of people to retroactively declare or revoke support from a party that is perceived as the correct answer or indeed the wrong answer. It would be better to get a larger sample that you can subtract from but that requires more groundwork and consequently is more expensive which ultimately is something the media outlets that commission the polls can’t stomach.
It might seem strange but really all you can do is take the numbers that are weighted with a sceptical eye knowing that they might be representative but then again might not; or it other words you might as well just assume that support is vaguely in that area.
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It’s tricky, because then the best one can say is that the SF/Others area may be over represented, or perhaps under-represented in the case of SF (given the likelihood that some may be unwilling to admit to positive sentiment towards them). I think you’re right though, it’s the broad brush strokes that are probably most revealing, and those seem to point to decline for FG… possibly FF, Labour holding its own but on low figures, SF mid teens or a bit higher… Inds/Others probably not as high as the polling suggests at the moment. Scepticism is a good way of putting it.
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I wouldn’t say that they are being systematically over represented but that their numbers would be more volatile due to the need to weight them upwards; that is probably due to a high amount of IND/OTH support in the C2DE demographic as these are people less likely to answer opinion polls. If you look at page 48 you can see the likelihood to vote filter also suggests plenty of FF,SF and IND/OTH voters not sure to vote which could raise their support should the next election have a high turnout.
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That makes a lot of sense re volatility. And certainly there seems to be both volatility and a sort of churn amongst FF/SF/IND/OTH voters.
I’d wonder how FG and LP are looking at these figures trying to find some hope from them.
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[…] vote for their favourite party. But, it’s a bit difficult to understand why when the SBP and the Sunday Times in their poll had Independent and Others polling well into the 20s that SI/MB would show them […]
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