Jack Jones says his most satisfying jobs were helping Seamus Mallon beat the UUP's Jim Nicholson for the Newry/Armagh seat in the 1986 Westminster by-election, and helping his SDLP colleague Eddie McGrady defeat Enoch Powell in the general election the following year.
Jones, chairman of MRBI and doyen of Irish pollsters, has written In Your Opinion - Political and Social Trends in Ireland Through the Eyes of the Electorate, which will be launched on Monday. After the army, he left a job in market research to found MRBI in 1962 and for the first 11 years his company was confined to commercial research - still 96 per cent of its business. Today, with a staff of 40 and 120 field interviewers, it compiles audience figures, evaluates products and conducts political polls which gauge support and identifies where work needs to be done or vote management employed. But this info is private and MRBI is best-known for the opinion polls it undertakes for media organisations such as The Irish Times.
Much of his book is devoted to private political research. He has worked for only four parties - Fine Gael, Labour, DL and the SDLP - as he believes it unethical to work for competitors. He details many successes: how he forecast Erskine Childers beating Tom O'Higgins for the presidency in 1973; how his polling urged Fine Gael to greater vote management which saw it take two of the four seats in Dublin North Central in 1982; and how he had to go to Government Buildings in 1977 to tell Garret FitzGerald and his FG/Labour cabinet that, contrary to all the pundits, they were about to lose the general election. Some ministers believed him, some did not.
There are a few tales. When he delivered very bad research figures to a businessman he was asked what he thought should be done now. "Have you a revolver in your drawer?" asked Jones. Once requested by a well-known journalist, whom he won't name, to access the impact he would have if he ran for election, Jones said the journo's name would have to appear on a simulated ballot paper to get a result. Forget it, said the journo. Then when Senator Des Hanafin went to court to dispute the pro-divorce result in the 1995 referendum, Jones (who had done three polls for the Government and seven for The Irish Times) was on standby to give evidence for the Government. He was subpoenaed by the petitioners and ended up spending three days as an expert witness.