The poll is based on 5,018 completed interviews that were carried out immediately after people voted at polling stations in 43 constituencies across the Republic of Ireland.
In the 2020 Irish general election, Sinn Féin secured 24.53% first preference votes, while Fianna Fáil obtained 22.18% and Fine Gael got 20.86%.
The results from this poll set the scene for the official counting of votes which starts at 09:00 local time on Saturday and is expected to continue across the weekend.
It is possible that some of the 43 constituencies may not have a final result until the beginning of next week.
Successful candidates are known as Teachtaí Dála (TDs) and there are 174 seats to fill, but the Ceann Comhairle (speaker) is returned automatically.
More than 680 candidates competed for the remain 173 seats.
The number of seats required for an overall majority is 88 but no single party is fielding enough candidates to win a majority on its own.
The first meeting of the new Dáil (lower house of parliament) is on 18 December but it is unlikely coalition negotiations will have finished by then.
There will be coverage of the election results on BBC Two NI at 18:00 GMT on Saturday and on BBC One NI on Sunday Politics at 10:00 GMT.
The BBC News NI website will be running a live page with the latest updates over the weekend.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
