THE highly tuned scepticism of the Northern political audience is reflected in several aspects of today's poll, particularly in the striking statistic that 55 per cent of people sampled think that Mr Adams knew about the impending ceasefire breakdown.
This, of course, could be too simplistic. Those who answered "yes" to this option may have done so on the basis that they considered pragmatically that he must have known, or that they suspected strongly that he could have known.
The extreme and erratic shifts and swings in the North's political fortunes and consequently in the public mood make it very perverse territory for opinion pollsters.
For example, the entire psychological vista was once again transformed radically in the space of the past 24 hours.
On Monday afternoon, when the talks ended between Sinn Fein and British government officials, the outlook was read by all observers as being grim, intractable and totally pessimistic.
Yet by yesterday afternoon, there was a resurgence of optimism that the peace process was almost back on track again.
Such sudden about turns have not been unusual over the past couple of years in the North. Uncertainty dominates, hopes have been raised and dashed many times, and people can only cope with such a volatile climate by exercising a high degree of cynicism, moderated by a strong dose of fatalism and pragmatic realism.
Thus, the Northern electorate are shown by the poll to be much more pragmatic than their opposite numbers in the Republic and in Britain in ascribing responsibility for events.
The Northern sample attributed 61 per cent of the blame for the breakdown of the peace process to the IRA, and 25 per cent to the British government. But strikingly, a similar apportionment of responsibility for making the first move to resume the process was also evident 62 per cent of people said the IRA should resume the ceasefire, and 27 per cent said the British should set an early date for all party talks.
These figures are significantly different to the equivalent ones in the Republic and in Britain. The North's population took a more basic, realistic line, while the Republic's electorate have the luxury of being more theoretical and abstract.
It is clear from the poll that there is a great residue of disillusion and anger at the actual breaking of the ceasefire. In the Northern consciousness the reversal of that was, plainly, the first priority.
The difference in the Republic, where much larger proportions of the sample looked beyond the reality of the ceasefire breakdown and attributed blame for it to the British government or political parties, is again significant.
However, there was impressive uniformity in the proportions of people in the Republic, the North, and Britain who believe that a resumption of the IRA ceasefire should be a precondition for Sinn Fein participation in all party talks (the percentages were 35, 35 and 32 respectively).
Of the three regions, the North yielded the highest percentage of those taking the most harsh view on preconditions 31 per cent of people considering that the IRA must decommission all weapons before the start of talks.
This high figure, of course, reflects the extent of unionist fears and intense feeling about the arms issue, even though the people who stipulated this precondition must have been aware that the Mitchell report had concluded it was unrealistic.
The broad strain of fatalism in the North, interestingly, did not preclude a general manifestation of the view that an element of hope must be preserved even in the most pessimistic circumstances.
Only 26 per cent of the Northern sample thought that the peace process was "finished for good", with a total of 70 per cent perceiving it as either being merely stalled, or still continuing.
However, a considerable degree of cynicism is evident in the Northern percentages (40 and 41 per cent respectively) which feel that either the election proposal or the referendum proposal will make little difference either way to the attainment of peace.
Again, the population is pragmatic enough to realise that a final settlement must go far beyond such mechanisms.
There is food for thought in the religious breakdown in regard to the minority of people who think the Border matters and people should be prepared to fight for it if necessary".
Only 17 per cent of the Northern sample, overall, agreed with this, but the breakdown shows that five times more Protestants than Catholics held that view, whereas almost half of the Protestants and 35 per cent of Catholics felt it was not worth risking any lives for.
Very significantly, 70 per cent of all Catholics in the sample felt that the North should either remain part of the UK or be linked both to the UK and to the Republic.
There is, apparently, a strong element of overall disillusionment with absolutist political solutions and considerable openness to compromise, a lesson that the politicians on all sides might usefully take to heart.