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Sat 04 Apr 2007Localised polling often shows a sitting TD's vulnerabilityIn an address to the Patrick McGill Summer School in Donegal in July 2004, Garret FitzGerald, emphasising that he was no longer actively engaged with the Fine Gael party, revealed that he had been surprised at how well it had done in that June's local elections, writes Noel Whelan.He attributed his surprise, in part, to the fact that national media no longer seemed to cover politics outside the media and government beltway of Dublin 2 and 4, to the extent he felt it once had. As a consumer of political coverage at national level, albeit a relatively astute one, he felt he had as a result been left blind-sided about the extent of the party's improvement around the country since its disastrous 2002 election.