The only comparable period I can recall when intense political events coincided with a temporary absence of published polling data was during the 1997 presidential election.
The then Belfast-based academic Mary McAleese was the surprise winner of the Fianna Fáil nomination for that contest.
In the first set of national polls published the weekend after her selection, she did surprisingly well.
However, over the following week to 10 days, Ms McAleese was assailed by controversy and her campaign seemed to be in crisis. A confidential foreign affairs note about a conversation with her some years previously was leaked in a manner designed to portray her as a Sinn Féin sympathiser.
Then both Ms McAleese and her campaign team had a series of testy confrontations with a number of high-profile journalists. It all came to a somewhat farcical crescendo one Sunday night when there was a confrontation between her campaign manager Noel Dempsey and RTÉ's Jim Fahy in the foyer of a Galway hotel.
Through all of this period there were no published polls and there was much speculation about how the public was reacting to the controversy.
Many of the media guessed that Ms McAleese's support was imploding. Some argued that the entire controversy was being played out in a narrow political and media bubble and wasn't having an impact on the public at all.
Others speculated that, if anything, the controversy was actually helping Ms McAleese's candidature, exposing the public to this relative unknown, and even giving rise to an element of sympathy for her and public annoyance at the manner and tone of the media pack's pursuit.
When the polls were finally published they revealed that not only had support for Ms McAleese held up, but it had in fact increased. It continued to rise and the rest, as they say, is presidential history.
The few morsels of soft polling data which were published in the last three weeks appeared to indicate that a large majority of the public, while critical of the manner in which Bertie Ahern had received payment while he was minister for finance, still wanted him to be their Taoiseach.
This has now been confirmed by the first set of substantial data revealed in The Irish Times-TNSmrbi poll. Yesterday's results will be as comforting to Mr Ahern this weekend as those published nine years ago were to his presidential election candidate.
The rise of 8 percentage points for Fianna Fáil is not only the most dramatic shift in any party's figures in more than four years, it also puts the party, theoretically at least, back up at the vote share it received in the 2002 election.
This is a truly significant movement in the right direction with just about 30 weeks left before the likely election date.
The Government appears not only to have been left unscathed by the recent controversy but also to have evaded any long-term damage from the handling of the fallout of the "C" case in July, which was the other intense political crisis to occur since the last comparable poll.
An improvement in its poll figures this autumn was always going to be crucial for any credible suggestion of a Fianna Fáil fight back.
The party would have hoped for a bounce from its one-day ardfheis due to be held in early November, and another bounce from the budget in early December. However, even before those set pieces the party appears to have turned the corner and positioned itself very well for the final straight.
The many Fianna Fáil backbenchers who may have feared they would be included in an avalanche of seat losses can breathe a sigh of relief - at least for the moment.
Their biggest fear now will be that an improvement in the party's poll figures on this scale will give rise to complacency.
They will be nervous that their party's senior politicians or strategists may even get cocky thinking that irrespective of how potentially damaging a crisis they may face, or how ineptly they handle it, under Mr Ahern they are assured of re-election.
The second most dramatic movement reflected in yesterday's poll is the 4 per cent drop in the Labour Party's support.
It is worrying because it leaves them on just 11 per cent, although the usual warnings about margins of error apply.
It is difficult to be definitive about why this has happened. The only potential explanation may be a rise in disquiet among potential Labour Party voters about the closeness of the party to Fine Gael.
September's exchange visits by Mr Rabbitte and Mr Kenny to each others parliamentary party "think-ins" may have exacerbated this factor. If this is the explanation, however, the rise in Mr Rabbitte's own satisfaction rating is somewhat curious.
Fine Gael's vote has also declined albeit by only 2 per cent, which is just within the margin of error. At the same time Enda Kenny's satisfaction rating has risen by 2 per cent, although again within the margin of error.
The depressing reality for rainbow strategists is that, notwithstanding the Government's recent difficulties, the Opposition has made no further ground.
Yesterday's figures give some statistical support for the contention that the public saw the Opposition's performance on the recent crisis as inadequate. There was a sense that the Opposition couldn't score goals against a weakened Government, even when shooting from the penalty spot.
Both Kenny and Rabbitte must be worried that, when faced (notionally at least) with the prospect of not having Mr Ahern as their Taoiseach, most of the electorate appear to have balked at the idea.
There are two strong messages from this poll. The first is that victory is not assured for either side; there is a real contest in play.
The second is that the rainbow cannot rely on the current Government to lose the election; they themselves are going to have to do something about winning it. Game on.