Election 2016: everyone got it wrong and yet it feels so right

As the dust settles on another general election, it’s worth looking back at how everyone got it so wrong.

Pollsters? Wrong. Handlers? Wrong. Politicians? Wrong. Pundits? Wrong again.

Let’s remind them.

The polls were wrong: massively so, in the case of Galway West. That IPSOS/MRBI poll for TG4 was what you might politely describe as rogue. Also known as, they made a dog’s dinner of it.

Where to start? The poll predicted Fine Gael in Galway West had 30% support, 9% more than Fianna Fáil (21%). FF (24.3%) actually beat FG (24%).

The poll put Éamon Ó Cuív (FF) and Seán Kyne (FG) running neck and neck at 13% each; the actual result was 14.7% versus  9.4%.

The poll’s first preference prediction of 11% support for FG’s John O’Mahony was way off his actual vote (7.3%). It was the opposite for Noel Grealish. The Independent TD was 7% and set to lose his seat, according to the poll. Yet he came second, with 11.1%, his best ever election. Odd given that his trenchant supporter – Terry O’Flaherty – was quizzed by telephone for the poll!

Another poll close to the election in a local free-sheet got it wrong, too, predicting Derek Nolan of Labour would hold his seat when in actual fact he wasn’t within an ass’s roar of it, despite paying for expensive front-page wraparound adverts in said free-sheet.

The politicians were telling us all to ignore the polls. The only poll that counts is the actual poll. These are the same politicians – particularly Government politicians – who were telling us they were getting a great reception on the doorsteps. Well the doorsteps were obviously wrong too. The amount of horse manure that politicians get fed on the doorsteps is incalculable.

And the makey-uppy doorsteps – the fancy focus groups – were wrong. They wrongly told the handlers, who then wrongly told the politicians, to ‘keep the recovery going’. Oh how wrong they were.

And because the polls were wrong, and the doorsteps were wrong, and the focus groups were wrong, and the handlers got it wrong, inevitably the politicians got it wrong. And as for the pundits? It’s shocking how wrong some of them were.

It’s a vicious circle though. Are the politicians wrong because the doorsteps were wrong (you lied to them, you divils); or are the doorsteps wrong because the people on the doorsteps are listening to too much of the wrong analysis of the wrong pundits, who are basing their wrong commentary on the polls that are wrong? Who knows?

But now the cabbages that got it all so wrong – handlers, politicians and pundits – have come to the conclusion that it is you, the voters who are wrong.

And they think you were so wrong, that there is even a suggestion they’ll ask you again, and re-run the election – like the European referendums – until you get it right! Now that really would be wrong.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.