Although set up 11 years earlier, MRBI did not conduct political research until the 1973 election campaign, and the company's major focus continues to apply to the commercial sector.
In every general election up to 1992, the MRBI commentary accurately foreshadowed the outcome, and in almost all instances - as one would expect statistically - the party support figures on first preference intentions fell within the statistical variation of the sample.
This pattern changed on June 6th, 1997, when MRBI conducted an election day in-home survey of 1,400 electors for The Irish Times. Interviews were ended at 8 p.m. The outcome was an overstatement of 5 per cent for Fianna Fail and a corresponding understatement over the other parties and Independents. An analysis of those who had voted and those who had not but intended to proved very informative.
The figures for all parties among electors who voted were accurate, reflecting the precise election figure of 39 per cent for Fianna Fail. For those who had not yet voted but said they intended to, there was an overstatement of eight points in favour of Fianna Fail.
While these analyses provide the basis for the application of a new weighting factor, which MRBI has implemented over the past five opinion polls including today's, the situation presents a serious technical challenge to devise a form of questioning to identify those most unlikely to vote, and to eliminate these from the tabulations. MRBI has been working on this since September.
The new weighting factors give more reliable findings. Separate weighting factors are applied to each party nationally on an overall basis at final tabulation stage. The research objective is to identify the individual electors who overstate support for Fianna Fail.
The decrease in turnout, which was down 10 points to 65 per cent in the 1997 election relative to 1981 (six elections earlier), and the reluctance of some electors to admit they were unlikely to vote have been causing problems in political research for some time, while the fact that Fianna Fail has led the formation of the government after each of the last four general elections means that younger electors registered to vote since the November 1982 election perceived a Fianna Fail victory each time, irrespective of the size of its first preference vote.
Some electors who are no longer interested in politics or are disillusioned with the system, and are reluctant to admit it, are inclined to nominate Fianna Fail as their choice, having seen no other outcome. On the other hand, it also appears that many in this situation euphemistically claim to be undecided. We are moving into a different society, and for a number of reasons politics is no longer on the agenda for many people.