In the wake of the election results, politicians must be asking what exactly voters want, because nobody — including the opinion polls — seems to know anything.

Mid-term elections are traditionally about giving the incumbent Government a good kicking, but that didn’t happen here. We have long been told that voters want change, yet the big winners were the same old Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

For nearly four years, it has been a given that Sinn Féin is now the most popular party in the country — yet it came third in the local elections. The consensus at the last general election is that the Shinners ran too few candidates, and the consensus this time is they ran too many.

The country was gearing up for a swing to the right through a slew of political entrepreneurs preaching intolerance towards asylum seekers, yet there was no harvest for these individuals.

Then we have the long heralded sophistication of the Irish electorate. Surely a long list of candidates could not impact on such sophisticated voters? Well, yes, as one feature of ballot boxes was the high number in which voters did not go down beyond their first or second preference.

Was there too much choice? Was the ballot paper physically unmanageable? Who knows?

Even the opinion polls apparently haven’t a clue

For the last few years, most polls had Fianna Fáil’s popularity dipped well below 20%, yet it emerged from this election well over — heading for 23%.

On Saturday, Micheál Martin let rip on the know-nothing opinion polls and the know-nothing commentators.

“Some people said that Fianna Fáil would be coming in a distant third, but that has been completely disproved,” he told reporters.

“I have been looking at opinion polls for the past three years, independent polling, having Fianna Fáil at 14% or 15%. Clearly we will be well ahead of that, over 20% by the time all of these counts are put together.”

He sounded like he does when he talks about hurling, his Cork accent pulling hard at the standard political cadences.

While the election results might suggest nobody knows anything, one man who appeared to know what he was at yesterday was Taoiseach Simon Harris.

Mr Harris showed up at the RDS to bask, walk, greet and talk among the party faithful.

This was the most encouraging election outcome for Fine Gael since the halcyon days of 2011, when the people called on his party to clean up the mess after the economic collapse.

He was greeted at the door of the building by a giddy gaggle of senior people, including Pascal Donohoe and Euro near-certainty Regina Doherty. Inside, he adopted a suitably humble pose — playing down the wind that has now gathered at his party’s back.

“I’m 61 days as a Taoiseach of this country,” he said. “People want me to bring energy not just to the campaign trail, but also to solving some issues —
including ones that have seemed intractable in the past — and that’s my absolute determination.”

It is way too early to opine on the kind of Taoiseach Harris is or will be.

Nobody, however, would dispute that he has performed his most immediate task: To inject energy, to steady his party’s ship, and set it on a course for the next election. It will be exhausting to watch, not to mind follow, him if he keeps going at the pace he has set.

Mary Lou McDonald has had better days. What remains to be seen is whether she has the resilience and personal resources to get back on the horse.

There is one group of people who could, and probably would, claim to know exactly what it is that voters want. This was, above all else, the Independents’ election.

Whatever losses that the main parties have sustained have been hoovered up by independents across the country, including Independent Ireland

On first-preference votes, Independents now account for the largest block of councillors across the State.

They are a disparate bunch united only by the status of being unattached to any party. They came from the left, they came from the right, but many of them came from the centre or from fiefdoms created by Independent TDs.

Some have achieved electoral success purely through hard work, and all have had to campaign without the back up of a party machine. Their heightened presence on local authorities will most likely have little impact on governance at local level.

If the results whisper anything about the general election to come, surely it is that we can expect the next Dáil to have a much increased cohort of Independents.

Such a scenario will undoubtedly further complicate the business of Government formation. Whatever combination of parties make up the main element of a further administration, it is now looking increasingly likely that a group of Independents will be required to provide a working majority.

Who will they be and what will be the price of their support are going to be among the big questions.

Right now, in the wake of the weekend’s results, the one thing we do know is that nobody really knows anything anymore.