Vote Intention Poll Performance: Irish General Election 2020

How did the pre-election polls for the 2020 Dáil perform?

On Saturday 8th February, Irish voters cast their votes.

How well did the pre-election polls do? This article discusses their performance.

Final Polls

Six companies conducted vote intention polls during the Irish General Election campaign. The latest date that the survey fieldwork stopped was 2nd February — six days before the election.

According to RTÉ, Sinn Féin received the highest share of first preferences: at 24.5%. Fianna Fáil were second on those preferences, at 22.2%. Fine Gael were third, with a share of 20.9%.

The first counts determined the share of first preferences. (Image: RTÉ)

In order to measure accuracy, we are interested in:

• SF Lead: the difference of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil vote intention share estimates minus the actual Sinn Féin lead in Ireland.
• Three-party mean absolute error: the average of the absolute difference between vote intention estimates and the actual vote share, for Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.
• Five-party mean absolute error: a similar calculation, but extended to Labour and the Green Party.