A poll of polls

Village has calculated the average results of all national, published opinion polls since the last election, up until the day of printing, Wednesday 2 May. Individual polls are unreliable guides to election results – as the pollsters themselves stress, they give just a snapshot at a particular moment in time, and can be fickle. But when taken together, the polls show trends, and these calculations' average results bring those out. Fine Gael's recent bounce has had little impact upon the average figures, which puts them at just one per cent above their 2002 first-preference vote.

 Of the hypothetical coalition options, just Fianna Fáil and Labour come close to a majority, with 48.6 per cent, while Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin together have 45 per cent and Sean Donnelly's prediction, a coalition of Fianna Fáil, the Greens and the PDs, has 45.1 per cent. The state of the parties is as follows (with the 2002 result in brackets):

• Fianna Fáil: 35.9% (41.5%)

• Fine Gael: 23.5% (22.5%)

• Labour: 12.8% (10.8%)

• Sinn Féin: 9.3% (6.5%)

• Green Party: 5.5% (3.8%)

• Progressive Democrats: 3.9% (4%)

• Others: 9.1% (11%)

Based on these figures, the various, hypothetical coalition options have the following combined support (in order of strength):

• Fianna Fáil and Labour: 48.7%

• Fianna Fáil, the Greens and the PDs: 45.3%

• Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin: 45.2%

• Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party: 41.8%

• Fianna Fáil and the Greens: 41.4%

• Fine Gael, Labour, and the PDs: 40.3%

• Fianna Fáil and the PDs: 39.8%

• Fine Gael and Labour: 36.4%

(These averages are calculated on the basis of 17 TNS MRBI polls in the Irish Times, 11 Millward Brown IMS polls in the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune, 21 Red C polls in the Sunday Business Post and two Lansdowne Market Research polls in the Irish Examiner)