THIS opinion poll - the second in the series this year - was conducted against a political background of high anticipation that the formal announcement of the timing of the general election was imminent, and that the impending battle was about to commence.
Against the wavering environment of the January poll, Fianna Fail was holding steady in the mid 40s, while both Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats were showing signs of a potential to capture some of the much coveted floating element.
Conducted immediately before the Easter break - on March 26th and 27th - some time following the Fianna Fail document on zero tolerance, and before the publication of the party's recent manifesto on environmental issues - the results of this survey confirm the viewpoint that I have expressed for some time, that the crucial floating voters will most likely be distributed across a number of parties in the forthcoming general election.
However, although several trends and movements are evident, it is still premature to attempt to deduce the likely outcome, either in terms of likely first preference votes or distribution of seats.
The current trends in party support figures are shown in Tables A and B. The drop of one point in core support, converting to two in net terms for Fianna Fail since January, is at this juncture not significant. One should await the next poll figures before making any longer term deductions.
However, a figure at or below the mid 40s at this stage suggests that the party may be fortunate to reach its 1987 and 1989 figures of 44 per cent. Consistent with the party situation, Mr Bertie Ahern's satisfaction rating is also marginally down since January.
On the other hand, the Fine Gael core and net support levels have increased by three points over the past two months, and the party's current figure of 30 per cent is its highest for over seven years, since July 1989. Again, while this is strongly confirmed by significant increases in both the Government's and Taoiseach's satisfaction ratings - in the latter case to +35 points in net terms - one must continue to await what the immediate future holds before attempting to predict the outcome of the election.
The Labour Party vote has been noticeably stable over the past year, except for an upward blip to 13 per cent in September, and its present level of 11 per cent is above its general election performances since the start of the 1980s, with the exception of the 1992 windfall of 19 per cent.
Should this stability continue, the party may surprise many commentators in the election. Again, the perception of Dick Spring's performance reflects a significant upturn since January to a net +19 points, and almost certainly accounts for the current 11 per cent figure compared with 10 per cent in each of the previous two comparable opinion polls.
The Progressive Democrats will also be pleased with their current net figure of 8 per cent, which has been surpassed on only six occasions since the early days. The most recent was 11 per cent in December shortly after their annual conference. Current support is considerably above the general election impact in 1989 and 1992, and provides a justified basis for optimism in the lead in to the election.
The figure of 2 per cent for Democratic Left indicates remarkable consistency over the past three years. When superimposed on the specific constituencies which the party will be contesting, this suggests its high profile candidates will very likely repeat their success of 1992.
It is difficult to read the potential for the Green Party - currently on 2 per cent - since this represents a marginal drop on its opinion poll performance over the past three years.
At 2 per cent the party does not have the high profile impact which Ministerial office provides, but its performance in the European election cannot be set aside.
Although wishful thinking in the guise of confident political forecasting on the part of many politicians continues to grace the airwaves, professionally speaking the outcome remains unpredictable.
This is to a large extent contributed to by the point made earlier that in the election floating voters are likely to be distributed over a number of parties - possibly as many as four.
A further factor which may in time be significant is that the gap in preference terms between a Fianna Fail/PD coalition and that of the three Governmental parties has halved from 12 to six points since January.