Why was there no RTÉ (or pool) exit poll from the referendum? Why hasn’t the Eurobarometer post-referendum poll been released? This thing gets more farcical by the hour.

Since about 10.30 last Friday morning, when it became clear it would be a ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty on the early tallies, seemingly everyone in Ireland and everyone in Europe had an opinion about why Ireland voted No.

Knowing the ‘why’ was essential for a lot of reasons:

1. Apportioning credit and blame amongst campaigners, for which arguments carried the day.
2. Using that credit and blame as a basis for the authority of campaigners on either side as the debate continues
3. For those in Leinster House and Brussels for whom No doesn’t mean No, addressing the motives for voting No is the only way to eventually reverse the decision.

It was clear - or should have been - from the outset that a No vote would require explanation, and that the Irish Times poll from the week previous or the Red C poll from the Sunday before were not adequate. They didn’t measure actual voters. They measured a general sample, which didn’t account for higher turnout amongst 20somethings.

As imperfect as it might have been, an exit poll commissioned by the Irish media and conducted by an Irish research firm, as is common practice with general elections (here’s RTÉ’s story about the 2007 exit poll conducted for them by Lansdowne Mkt Research) would have given some answers.

On Friday, as the result was confirmed, EU commission vice president Margot Wallstrom told RTÉ that - becasue it was essential to find out why Irish people voted No - there would be a “flash Eurobarometer” poll conducted. “Results” are leaking out. But why don’t we have the poll itself?

On Tuesday, the Indo’s Fionnan Sheehan reported excerpts from the findings of the “published” Eurobarometer poll, including:

The poll of 2,000 voters found:
- Young people voted ‘No’ by a margin of two to one.
- The vast majority of women voted ‘No’.
- A large number of people who do not vote in general elections voted.
- People who did not understand the treaty voted ‘No’.
- The huge influx of immigrants into the country was a factor in the ‘No’ vote.
- More than 70pc of ‘No’ voters thought a second treaty would be negotiated.

The Irish Times gets it a day later - or rather, they seem to have sight of a memo ABOUT the poll prepared for European Commission presdient Barroso - and it’s referenced all over the Dail debate Wednesday.

So where is it?

STILL nothing on the Eurobarometer website. (I’ve emailed their public opinion unit asking when it will be posted, but I’d be amazed iif I get a response.)

So, there was no exit poll, which meant that as results came in on Friday, everybody who campaigned on the Treaty - yes and no - could spin that it was their efforts/arguments/claims or larger issues/concerns that won or lost the day.

Richard Boyd Barrett argued that people voted No because of fears of a “militarised Europe”, which of course was his concern. Mary Lou McDonald argued people voted No because of Sinn Fein’s issues. Joe Higgins argued that people voted No because of a lack of protection for workers. Libertas argued that people voted No because of concerns about “the direction Europe is taking”.

Garrett Fitzgerald and Fintan O’Toole could argue that the vote revealed a class divide in Irish society that, quelle surprise, they had both been arguing was there, and use the result to further their own domestic political arguments.

Fintan could also argue that the electorate was whipped into a frenzy of fears about conscription to a European Army, citing a single example of a spoiled ballot in Clare.

(That Irish soldiers are serving in a European force in Chad on a murky mandate right now, with almost no media coverage — what are the rules of engagement if Irish troops observe a massacre in progress? — and were under fire in Chad the day Fintan’s column ran in the Guardian suggests that this is hardly “irrational”. It is flawed, deeply, but that’s in part because of the lack of media coverage of the Irish engagement. Richard Waghorne is an honourable exception, who came under mortar RPG fire reporting for the Daily Mail last weekend.)

This matters deeply, because the impression has been allowed to form internationally, thanks to lazy repeating of Fintan’s assertions like this Slate column - that Irish voters are simpletons prone to irrational fears about being forcibly drafted into a foreign army.

Not having an exit poll was a huge mistake. It let this vacuum form and be filled by spin, and it’s going to make the process of deciding what to do now even harder than it would have otherwise been.

But much, much worse is this selective leaking of information from an unpublished poll, supposedly a flash Eurobarometer survey. That selective leaking is driving debate, and is going to further increase distrust in politicians - in Dublin and Brussels - based on confusion.

The poll should have been published properly, on the EU website, so that it could have been interrogated properly by lots of different people. What was the methodology? What research company was used? Where were they based? What were the questions? What are the demographic cross-tabs? Who actually commissioned it? Were there unprompted response questions? Did interviewers probe further on responses like “I didn’t understand the treaty”?

Because here are the concerns already. The Indo reported:

A major survey of voters conducted by the European Commission immediately after last Thursday’s referendum…

Really? The Commission did its own phone calls? What does “immediately” mean? Thursday night? Or after the result was known?

The Irish Times reported:

Young people between the age of 15 and 29 voted against the treaty by a factor of two to one, a finding that is labelled as “very serious”

Really? How many 15 year olds voted in the referendum exactly? Given that the voting age is 18? Was this even a survey of people who said they’d voted?

Who commissioned the poll? The Indo says the Commission even “conducted” it. Did they commission it? The Irish Times reports it was:

A telephone poll commissioned by the European Commission in conjunction with the Taoiseach’s office

Wow. So is this even a Eurobarometer at all? Or is it a private poll that will never be published? If the latter, is this not the most insane imaginable outcome if your goal is to increase trust in the European project at its moment of maximum peril in the minds of Irish voters, who instead are being hectored and bullied even more than before the vote?

Finally, the one finding that seems consistent is this one:

When asked to give a single reason for voting No, 40 per cent of people replied that they didn’t understand the treaty.

But what does it mean? Government and main opposition TDs are keen to argue it means people DIDN’T vote out of a recoil from the insane “trust us” approach taken by Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore. I would argue the opposite. If the Yes side had the credibility to put their case across, that level would surely be a lot lower. The No side would never have been able to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt if the Yes side had authority.

As it is, Sinn Fein are arguing that their issues were why voters went for No, and on that basis have given a series of “demands” - to use Caoimhin O’Caoilain’s word - for amendments to the treaty to do with issues including nuclear power. Does nuclear power even show up in the data?

This thing is turning into a proper train wreck. They’re making even more of a hash of the aftermath then they did of the campaign.

UPDATE: earlier version had it as mortar fire in Goz Beida, rather than RPG fire. Correction above.