Terry Prone: Election 2024 has been boring — this week, that could change

Originally published in the Irish Examiner.

In fifty years of working on general elections, I’ve never seen one like this. Ever. Boring was never a word you’d have applied to any previous general election. But it does appertain in this one. With bells on. Or maybe no bells, because bells would imply either warning or celebration, and neither seems pertinent.

Let’s go further.

Never before has there been a more analysed election, with radio, TV, and newspapers working twice as hard as usual, and podcasts breeding like rabbits. In the old days, journalists lurked and skulked, planning to expose candidates for what they were.

Now, journalists talk to each other on every available platform about statistics, first preferences, and possibilities. Fair dues to them, they try hard. They probably try harder than did their revered predecessors, many of whom thought they’d done a great day’s work if they filed 800 words and appeared on Morning Ireland. But the payoff for today’s hacks? Much poorer. The analogy of flogging a dead horse eagerly offers itself, because commentators are running between platforms lashing opinions out of them in the face of a lack of interest unprecedented in electoral history.

Click here for the full article.