Those who have been following The Irish Times/MRBI series of polls over the last number of years will have noted that since January 2000, party support figures have been statistically adjusted to counteract the previous tendency of polls to overestimate levels of support for Fianna Fáil, and correspondingly understate support for Fine Gael and other parties.
National opinion polls have traditionally questioned respondents as to the political party they are likely to allocate their first preference vote. To an extent, this assumes that voters base their decision as to whom to vote for on the political party the candidates belong to, rather than the appeal and/or track record of the candidates themselves.
Under this scenario, a voter may intend genuinely to vote for a particular party towards which there may be a general "feel good factor", but actually vote for a representative of another party when they recognise him or her as a quality candidate on the ballot paper.
In support of this theory, in-depth research conducted by MRBI in 1999 indicated that 12 per cent of the electorate either could not identify the party to which a TD they could name belonged to, or identified their named TD with an incorrect party.
Another key factor to be considered is the MRBI analysis of first preference voting intentions as measured in the recent past via the simulated ballot paper technique across 16 constituencies. When compared with the actual 1997 election result in the same constituencies, the findings indicated an increase of two percentage points for Fianna Fáil candidates, a decrease of two points for Fine Gael, a drop of three for the PDs an increase of three for Sinn Féin, with no significant change in the Labour vote. While the overall trends are broadly in line with those produced by the national polls, they did suggest that the degree of increase and/or decrease might not be as extreme when the ballot paper technique is utilised.
On the basis, therefore, that the overstatement of Fianna Fáil and understatement of Fine Gael support in particular may well be linked to this confusion between party and candidate allegiance, it was decided to alter the method of questioning for the current survey.
Thus, rather than ask respondents to which party they would give their first preference vote, they were instead presented with a simulated ballot paper during the interview. This replicated the actual voting experience insofar as it listed the candidates likely to stand in their constituency by name, along with their party affiliation where appropriate. Respondents were then invited to allocate their first, second, third etc, preferences as they would when actually casting their votes on election day.
The rationale behind changing the nature of the interview is to control any element of uncertainty in the polling procedures employed, and to eliminate the need for statistical adjustment of party support figures into the future. The consolidated party support figures presented in today's reports are based upon this amended procedure.
Ian McShane