There's a whole industry in analysing the polls and patterns of elections. And yet, to my frustration, as I called my deepest sources, few dared predict the outcome of Saturday's election. Answers were hard to come by.
Eager to bring you certainty about our future, dear reader, I continued the search. After much work, I reached a numerologist over the phone. That's someone who believes in a mystical relationship between numbers and coinciding events, if you didn't know.
Recent dates on the calendar bode well for one party leader, they revealed: Mary Lou McDonald. Leo Varadkar must be kicking himself, having called the election for a date sort of near the second of February. The second day of the second month, in 2020, a date that has the number two in it multiple times. Two is good number for females, so could be good for female political leaders, I was told.
Not convinced you'd be satisfied with that, I sought out a professor of politics. He had his own numbers, seat prediction numbers this time. A political correspondent gave his take too, with a per-party break down. Yet, neither was certain of Saturday's outcome. Irish elections are notoriously hard to predict, even for those who can get in touch with 'The Force', I learned.
So, there was only one place to go next.
To the octopus. To Mystic Muireann.
She had a verdict.
Micheál Martin will be a happy man... but there was a tentacle reaching out, an indication of potential coalition partners perhaps? Who knows, if not Muireann?
