Frank Luntz, American Pollster in Ireland

elurhs

Surprised there's no thread for this yet, considering the publicity this has got.

Did anyone see The Week in Politics Special?
Basically consisted of this American political pollster, Frank Luntz conducting a focus group type poll/research into what people thought of the various party leaders. Interesting stuff as something like this has never been done over here.

I thought it was fairly well presented, and some of the results were interesting. The inital reaction to Ahern was largely positive until they people were shown a clip of his Ard Fheis speech, after which they slated him.
It was the exact opposite for Kenny, initial poor response, but an improvement after seeing the speech.
McDowell was universally disliked, but Rabitte got a generally positive response.

I thought the most interesting thing was the support for a Fianna Fail/Labour coalition.

A couple of things annoyed me. One, they didin't show any results on Sargent or Adams, and two, I wasn't impressed by RTEs analysts. They had that tallyman guy (can't think of his name), who was good as usual, but they also had Ivan Yates, who was understandably slightly biased to FG, and Terry Prone. I know she does PR, but could they not get anyone else?

All in all well worthwhile, and with two more polls lined up before the election worth keeping an eye out for.

simu

elurhs wrote:

I thought it was fairly well presented, and some of the results were interesting. The inital reaction to Ahern was largely positive until they people were shown a clip of his Ard Fheis speech, after which they slated him.
It was the exact opposite for Kenny, initial poor response, but an improvement after seeing the speech.
McDowell was universally disliked, but Rabitte got a generally positive response.

Fortunately for Bertie, few people watch the entirety of those speeches. I'm surprised people are so impressed by Kenny's speeches, though - personally, I find him painful to listen to (or is that civil war politics still ringing through 4 generations later?!)

oscarBravo

elurhs wrote:

Surprised there's no thread for this yet, considering the publicity this has got.

There is.