FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3

So, you are still standing by your false claim without any proof.

OK.

Perhaps you think that this post makes you look smart but it is simply stating the results of a poll of around 905 (I think) people conducted face to face over a number of days. The talk about the Siteserv report may have influenced FG's support. That Siteserv report did remind voters of FG's association with Dinny O'Brien (Moriarty, Lowry, Siteserv etc) and how nothing was done by FG. Just to explain it in simple terms for you, those are polls that try to measure first preference national support for the parties using various methodologies. However, outside the poll-toppers most of the TDs are elected on transfers. TDs are also elected at a local level. This is why institutionalised political correspondents and political reporters are frequently confused by election results.

Regards...jmcc

Amazing how you see fit to lecture people on Journalism and posting on Boards.ie. There was a rather nasty attempt at doxxing on another thread. You've been continually defending FFG here on various threads. FG's associations with Dinny O'Brien are well known and have featured in reams of newspaper articles, a few books, the Moriarty Tribunal and now the Siteserv report. There's a difference between posting on a forum with anonymous posters and writing an article for publication. As a journalist, it is important to get the facts right for publication. Posting on fora generally involves expressing personal opinions.

Regards...jmcc

Nah. You just don't understand polling and you don't understand what these polls mean. SF is presenting itself as an alternative to FFG and is providing practical solutions on energy bills while FFG politicans waffle. That's the kind of thing that appeals to voters. Now FFG supporters like yourself will probably claim that it is merely populist but those paying the bills don't give a damn what you or other FFG supporters think. This is a much bigger issue than the Water Tax and has the capability to wipe out FFG support in various constituencies on an IPP scale if not dealt with quickly.

Regards...jmcc

And to deal with that crisis, the EU and the government, like any government, have a plan which will involve spending a lot of money to help people out, as it should. Your posts on polls are interesting enough even if fanciful at times but some of them like this try to force the data to do something that is completely untrue. TBH it almost feels like you want them to fail on everything, which will make you you feel good but is of no great use to the rest of the country.

As usual people will use these types of irrelevant polls to see what they want but whatever particular views one might have on the government that 49% support, if realised, is a relatively simple path to stability and a potentially quickly-formed new administration. If one can learn anything from the polls it shows the challenge for those hoping to become an alternative government.

Polls are estimates, typically of national party support, rather than precise measurements. The problems arise when people and political correspondents and journalists take them as being measurements.

FFG is failing at many things and there seems to be no real thinking on how to solve problems other than to throw money to others and hope that they solve them. This causes problems like the Childrens Hospital, PPARS, Eircom etc. Polls are snapshots of public opinion at a specific point in time and use multiple methodologies. These multiple methodologies can be very misleading. RedC uses a sample from a 40K panel and B&A uses a random sample and face to face polling. They can both be right for the samples that they are surveying but can provide very different results. There's also the issue of Don't Knows and voting history that some of pollsters may treat differently. The DKs are a substantial percentage of voters. Excluding them or attempting to redistribute them based on voting history can make the parties look like they have much more support than they do in reality.

Regards...jmcc

Considering what happens if what these polls suggest is not going "Mystic Meg". The discontent in FF is very real and if Covid hadn't intervened Martin would have been gone. The rubber chicken circuit of gathering support was conducted via a set of Zoom meetings.

As for you, and others, pointing out things about polls, please forgive me as I seem to have missed your contributions.

When people rely upon institutionalised political correspondents and political journalists with minimal understanding of polling and surveys, they will typicaly be misled and will be surprised at the outcome of elections. That's why polcorrs get election predictions wrong. They got the 2016 GE wrong, Brexit wrong, Trump wrong, the 2020 GE wrong.

They were unaware that Labour had started to collapse after 2013 and the obliteration of Labour in 2016 was a big shock them them even though the data was predicting this. The emergence of the Big Three party model where no two parties would have enough seats for a government was also obvious from 2013 onwards and I called the spread between the largest and smallest part for the 2016 GE and the probability of a near-2002 style loss of seats for FG based on the data.

My comments here and elsewere upset party supporters because I focus on the data. That's why I called a lot of things correctly when party supporters and their tame journalists got things very wrong. Getting things right usually pisses off those who get things wrong.

Regards...jmcc