The joys of polling

With the election campaign finally underway, every party has begun to set out their stalls for the electorate to peruse. Perhaps even more excitingly, though, is the proliferation of polls which will now be released over the course of the next three weeks, with aspiring TDs, party spin doctors and background teams awaiting each new poll to see what effect the policies and desires of the candidates have on the voters.

In the 2002 and 2007 elections, every poll during the campaign was frequently dismissed as unimportant by people from all sides to such an extent that “the only poll that matters is the one on polling day” almost became the default mantra on any occasion a candidate was asked on his party’s latest performance. In this campaign, so far in any event, the parties have kept their opinions on the pollsters findings to themselves.

Certainly noticeable in their silence this time around is Fianna Fáil. In 2002, everyone in the party was eagerly trying to downplay the polls, which were predicting a 29^th Dáil with around eighty Fianna Fáilers returned to Leinster House, perhaps enough to form a majority government. In 2007, polls early in the campaign were predicting up to twenty lost seats, before the final week saw numbers rise again, courtesy of a series of robust performances by then Finance Minister Brian Cowen and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern looking more convincing than his chief rival, Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny, in the leaders’ debate.  That said, Fianna Fáil had averaged around 38% in polls in the six months up to election, a figure not too far from the final result of 42%, especially when the standard 3% margin of error polls always have is counted.

Despite what any party member might publically say, polls are a wonderfully useful way in finding out how the general public are likely to vote on polling day. Of course, the proportional representation system we have for elections depend on more than the first preference vote of the electorate, but the polls give a good indicator of who we can expect to be in government, and in the lower house, when the 31st Dáil meets for the first time on Wednesday, March 9.

Wednesday’s Irish Independent published its latest poll, carried out by Millward Brown Lansdowne, while Red C released its latest findings in a poll commissioned by Paddy Power bookmakers on Wednesday afternoon. While the two surveys have a large difference in the level of support for Fine Gael (Millward Brown Lansdowne has the leading party at 30%, Red C has them at 37%), and a notable gap in support for Labour (24% on the Millward Brown Lansdowne, 19% on the Red C), both are respectable polling companies which are usually quite accurate, and show that support for each party stabilise around the numbers given in the latest polls.

The Ipsos MRBI poll in Thursday's Irish Times broadly follows the lines of Wednesday's polls, even happily putting Fine Gael's rating halfway between the Red C and Millward Brown Lansdowne polls.


If these polls were replicated at the general election, Fine Gael would be the biggest party in the Dáil, but would need support to form a government, with Labour (the second most-supported party) being the obvious choice. Fianna Fáil would be the third party, just ahead of Sinn Féin and heavily dependent on transfers within the party’s support base, because they’re not going to get many transfers from supporters of other parties.

In terms of predictions, Fine Gael can expect to win somewhere between 30 and 35 per cent of the first preference vote, their best performance since Garret FitzGerald led the party into government in November 1982, with Labour hopeful of matching or exceeding the 19.5% the party got in the “Spring Tide” of 1992. Sinn Féin are aiming to double the vote they received in 2007, while independents and the United Left Alliance are looking to make major inroads and claim a significant number of seats in the new Dáil.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that an infuriated public withdrawing their support for a deeply unpopular government spells trouble for Fianna Fáil and the Greens. The election of Micheál Martin has stabilised the rapidly shrinking support for Fianna Fáil, but with poll ratings stuck in the mid-to-high teens for the past five months, the party would find it miraculous to even get to the low-20s on polling day, never mind the 41.5 % and 41.6% the party won in the 2002 and 2007 elections, respectively. Such a result would easily be the worst performance by Ireland’s most dominant political party, since its first election under Éamon de Valera in June 1926.

At least Fianna Fáil can still expect to be in the chamber on March 9. Their former coalition partners, the Green Party, is facing a wipeout on polling day, with all six of their seats at risk of being lost come February 25. The polls from all three agencies give little hope to the party, with support consistently below 5% in every poll taken in the past nine months, and as low as just 1% in the last two Millward Brown Lansdowne polls.

The campaigning is far from over, but given that the polls have been relatively stable over the last six months, and with only slight margins of error, one can observe that, if the people being asked are an accurate reflection of the general population, the electorate has largely made up its mind over who they’re voting for on February 25.