More analysis

It’s ‘game on’ as campaign kicks off
15/04/2007
With Fianna Fail and Fine Gael both losing ground, there’s plenty of work to do in the next few weeks, writes Political Correspondent Pat Leahy.

Independents as kingmakers
By Niamh Connolly, Political Reporter, 08/04/2007
Politicians can usually rely on the ardfheis season to give them a lift even a temporary one - on the doorsteps, but Independent politicians campaigning for election have no televised address or media outing to give them a boost in the polls.

Promises, promises
By Pat Leahy Political Correspondent, 01/04/2007
The thousands of delegates crammed into the ballroom in the Citywest Hotel, the overflow suites upstairs and the complex’s several bars roared and clapped their approval for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s presidential address to the Fianna Fail ard fheis last week.

Kenny’s day of reckoning
By Niamh Connolly, Political Reporter, 01/04/2007
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has a lot riding on the party’s ard fheis this weekend if he is to have a credible chance of leading an alternative government after the upcoming general election.

Polls show FF still slipping
By Pat Leahy, Political Correspondent, 01/04/2007
Two more constituency polls published last week have confirmed the downward trend in the Fianna Fail vote since the 2002 general election. Polls by Red C for the Kildare Nationalist and the Mayo News were published in recent days.

FF locked in slow downward spiral
By Richard Colwell, 25/03/2007
Instead, it now looks like a downward trend that will concern the party as we move closer to a general election. In this poll, Fianna Fail’s share of the first preference vote falls a further 2 per cent, down from 38 per cent last month to 36 per cent in March.

No joy for PDs, SF in Wexford
By Pat Leahy, Political Correspondent, 25/03/2007
However, though some of the seat occupants are likely to change, any change in party strengths at the general election is unlikely in the five-seat constituency, with FF and FG each retaining two seats and Labour keeping its one.

Tax sweeteners at election time avoid the big issues
By Cliff Taylor, 25/03/2007
European interest rates are heading upwards, and the fast emergence of economies in eastern Europe and the Far East - notably China - is transforming the competitive landscape. We still have a lot of things in our favour, but we are facing into a period a good deal more challenging than the fair winds that have blown through the last few years.

FF fearful in Rebel County
11/03/2007
Fianna Fail is facing seat losses in Cork, even without the news of job losses and a row over Cork Airport’s debt, writes Political Reporter Niamh Connolly.

Kenny faces uphill battle
By Pat Leahy, Political Correspondent, 11/03/2007
‘It would be time for a change if there was a really strong leader of Fine Gael.”

No safe seats in Dublin South East
By Niamh Connolly, 04/03/2007
There’s no such thing as a safe seat in an election, and this is borne out by several high-profile casualties in Dublin South East.

SF’s advance falters in south
By Pat Leahy, 04/03/2007
Sinn Fein delegates meet this weekend in the RDS in Dublin, on the brink of government in the North and significant seat gains in the south.

Party policies must cater for the lean years
By Cliff Taylor, 25/02/2007
As if engaged in the dance of the seven veils, the political parties are trying to tempt us by uncovering certain parts of their election promises, while keeping much of the detail firmly under wraps.

Voters sceptical of tax-cut pledges
By Pat Leahy, 25/02/2007
Half of all voters say they would be prepared to pay more taxes to fund public services, while the same proportion disagree with the proposition that the government should cut taxes instead of investing in public services.

All to play for in Bertie’s yard
By Niamh Connolly, 25/02/2007
For somebody who is arguably the most popular political leader since Jack Lynch, Bertie Ahern’s ability to bring in a second seat in his own backyard of Dublin Central has been less than convincing.

Opposition closes the gap as poll shows 4% drop for FF
By Richard Colwell, 25/02/2007
The gap between the potential government coalitions has begun to close in the latest Sunday Business Post/Red C opinion poll.

PDs are playing it safe
By Niamh Connolly, Political Reporter, 18/02/2007
When it comes to opinion polls, politicians either swear by them or swear at them. It’s the latter in the case of the PDs, who are hovering around the 3 per cent mark in the Red C/Sunday Business Post poll, and as low as 1 per cent in a recent MRBI poll.

Rabbitte stirs it up
18/02/2007
It was the outrage of the Progressive Democrats that really convinced Labour leader Pat Rabbitte and his lieutenants that they had hit the nail on the head with the Labour leader’s shock promise of tax cuts in his conference speech last weekend.

Will crime be the phantom issue of the next election?
By Pat Leahy, 11/02/2007
No issue unites the political parties, the media and the public like crime. There is a broad consensus that the danger faced by individual and society from crime, particularly violent crime, has never been greater.

Labour pins hopes on Rabbitte
By Niamh Connolly, 11/02/2007
With the election looming and the Labour Party failing to move above 12 per cent in the opinion polls, the party’s handlers are zoning in on the public’s satisfaction with party leader Pat Rabbitte.

Mountain to climb for Kenny
By Pat Leahy, 28/01/2007
What a difference a few months have made to the fortunes of Bertie Ahern and his government!

Public support swings behind coalition
By Pat Leahy, 28/01/2007
Support for Fianna Fail has increased substantially since December, leaving Taoiseach Bertie Ahern firmly on course for a third general-election victory in a row, according to the findings of the latest Red C tracking poll for The Sunday Business Post.

Tracking the long campaign
By Pat Leahy, 28/01/2007
With just months to go to the next general election, The Sunday Business Post/Red C series of monthly tracking polls returns today following the Christmas break.

Flying start to FF's re-election chances
By Richard Colwell, 28/01/2007
The first Sunday Business Post/Red C poll of 2007 goes against all expectations in the political arena and shows a continued upward trend in support of the current government coalition at the expense of the opposition.

Boost for FF as it holds poll gains
By Pat Leahy, 26/11/2006
Last month, following the opinion-poll boost for Fianna Fail in the wake of the Taoiseach’s loans/gifts controversy, the most important questions was: 'Is it a blip or is it a substantial change in the Irish political landscape?'

Steady as she goes for ruling coalition
By Richard Colwell, 26/11/06
The key question that this month’s Sunday Business Post/Red C poll had to answer was whether the ‘Bertiegate’ events were a decisive factor in the fortunes of the parties for the next election, or if the underlying trends evident before these events would return.

Electorate divided on tax cuts
By Pat Leahy and Richard Colwell, 26/11/06
The electorate is evenly divided on the question of public spending and taxes, though a clear majority believe that stamp duty should be reduced in the budget.

Bertiegate backfires on FG and Labour
By Richard Colwell, 29/10/06
Has the controversy over loans and payments to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern backfired on the opposition parties?

Swing voters abandon opposition
By Pat Leahy, 29/10/06
Support for Fianna Fail has surged in the month since the last Sunday Business Post/Red C tracking poll, while support for Fine Gael and Labour has slumped.

A note about our polls

All Sunday Business Post/Red C polls are conducted in all 43 constituencies throughout the state. For each poll, more than 1,000 detailed telephone interviews are conducted with potential voters and the results are then carefully weighted to produce a picture representative of the public's voting intentions.

In every respect, the Red C polls are conducted in accordance with the guidelines set down by professional market-research bodies for political and opinion polling distinguishing the process from polls conducted by some other newspapers, which canvass a much smaller number number of voters. Red C and The Sunday Business Post have also repeatedly explained the methodology by which the polls are conducted and also why and how any adjustments to the base sample have been made.

While the methodology is kept under constant review, the results of the most recent elections the first occasion for which Red C conducted polls for the newspaper have borne a high degree of accuracy. Our final poll, taken a week and a half before polling day for the 2004 local elections, predicted the Fianna Fail meltdown, the rise of Sinn Fein and even showed the beginnings of Fine Gael's late recovery. Following the widespread and much commented-upon inaccuracy of many opinion polls before the 2002 general election, we hope this augurs well for the future.

Opinion polls are not crystal balls into which we can gaze to predict events in the future. But what they do accomplish is to provide an accurate read of the political landscape at a point in time. From now on, we'll be describing that landscape as it changes and evolves in response to events.