We in the business of analysing politics pore over every angle of every major event and election, but the one factor we often ignore is luck and, arguably, it is the most important one.

Rabbitte's leadership has been dissected over the past couple of days in every newspaper and current-affairs programme on television and radio. Was he a good leader?

Did he make a mistake aligning himself so firmly to Fine Gael? Was he too witty and clever to be attractive to voters as a party leader (which, when you think of it, isn't exactly a vote of confidence in the 'most sophisticated electorate in the world', as we have smugly regarded ourselves over the past half a century)? Did he alienate key people in his own party by being overly autocratic? Et cetera, etbleedin'-cetera.

But in the end, his success or relative failure as Labour leader probably just came down to old-fashioned luck. If Fine Gael had succeeded in winning more than one seat out of seven in Kildare and taken a second seat, as was expected, in Cavan-Monaghan and Carlow-Kilkenny, and Labour's Eric Byrne (has there been a more unlucky politician in recent times? ) had not been so narrowly defeated in Dublin SouthCentral, then Rabbitte would now be Tanaiste.

True, it wouldn't have been a particularly brilliant election for Labour . . . just about holding its own . . . but that would have quickly been forgotten in the afterglow of the Rainbow's victory. Rabbitte's embracing of the Mullingar Accord would have been rightly regarded as a key factor in the most stunning political comeback in the history of the state (bearing in mind that Fine Gael and Labour were almost 30 seats behind Fianna Fail in 2002).

In government . . . probably largely dictating its direction . . .

and with five or six young, intelligent new senators, we might now be writing about the beginning of a new dawn for Labour.

But Rabbitte and the party just didn't have that slice of luck on election day.

For some politicians, Lady Luck can be an elusive mistress. Charlie Haughey never seemed to have luck on his side . . .

although he seemed to have an uncanny knack of being the author of his own misfortune. But some of his bad luck was well beyond his control. In the general election of 1981, he was effectively denied three seats and power by the presence of H-Block candidates (two of whom took seats in Louth and Cavan-Monaghan).

The following February, he narrowly failed to achieve an overall majority despite winning 47.26% of the first-preference vote (a figure Bertie Ahern has never come within an ass's roar of). His infamous GUBU government which followed that election certainly created many of its own problems, but what government has ever encountered the kind of bad luck that Haughey did when the most wanted man in the country, Malcolm MacArthur, was found in the home of the entirely innocent Attorney General?

By 1987, faced by a hugely unpopular outgoing Fine Gael and Labour government, it seemed Haughey would finally achieve his overall majority, only to be denied again by the emergence of the PDs (for which, of course, Haughey does have to take some responsibility).

In contrast, Dick Spring was what Napoleon would regard as a lucky general. A junior minister on his first day in the Dail, incredibly, he was elevated to party leader within 18 months, and Tanaiste a few weeks later. After a bruising four years in office, he came within four votes of losing his seat to FF in 1987. Nobody can dispute his achievements as Labour leader, but the reality is that the election of Mary Robinson in 1990, and the Spring Tide of 1992, would never have happened without those four precious transfers that allowed him retain his seat in Kerry North. The margin between success and failure in politics can be agonisingly thin.

Mary Harney is another 'lucky' politician. She presided over the PDs' disastrous 1997 election campaign where the party was nearly wiped out. But the Dail numbers fell her way and the four PD TDs were just enough to form a minority administration with Fianna Fail, just as the economy was entering boomtime.

Even the political genius that is Bertie Ahern wouldn't be where he is today without fortune smiling upon him. The Rainbow coalition's decision to hold that 1997 election in the summer . . . before the McCracken tribunal had reported its embarrassing revelations about Fianna Fail . . . was a huge mistake from which Ahern benefited. Ahern has also been lucky to be Taoiseach during the greatest economic boom the country has known (although, to be fair, he did play his part in delivering that boom). He is also living proof that another old adage that "no general can be lucky unless he is bold" doesn't hold in politics. Fortune doesn't favour the brave in Irish elections; it seems to be a lot more random that that.

Rabbitte was certainly bold in his approach. He went for a high-risk strategy of ruling out government with Fianna Fail and stuck to it. Against all the odds, it nearly paid off. Eleven years ago this month, Rabbitte's beloved Mayo was denied its dream of an All Ireland victory when in the last minutes a speculative kick bounced over the bar for Meath to equalise. There were other factors, certainly, in Mayo losing that All Ireland, but ultimately, if the luck had been with them, those factors wouldn't have been relevant and John Maughan's men would have prevailed. The same holds true for Pat Rabbitte and Labour last May.