Fine Gael has work ahead despite rise in support

A growing economy is the wind in the sails of Fine Gael. The party has edged further ahead of the pack in this latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll, up to 30 per cent, a gain of two points.

For Fine Gael’s Government partner the poll is less encouraging. If Fine Gael is sailing ahead, Labour is anchored in the single digits, registering just 7 per cent (down one point).

Independents and Others combined are on 23 per cent (down two points), only marginally ahead of Sinn Féin, which is on 21 per cent (up two points).

Fianna Fáil has lost one point, down to 19 per cent – a statistically insignificant decline but meaningful for being just two points ahead of the party’s 2011 general election performance.

Satisfaction with the Government is up four points to 34 per cent post-budget, a healthy increase in line with combined support for the two Government parties.

Fieldwork for this latest poll took place on Monday and Tuesday this week among a nationally representative sample of 1,200 voters aged 18 years and older.

Did the Government make the right decision to wait until 2016 to call the election or has the momentum generated by the October budget been lost?

If, to use a rugby analogy, Fine Gael’s strategy was to kick for goal and build a score rather than go down the line and take its chances, it appears to have worked. The party is up two points since September (to 30 per cent) and up 11 points in total since December 2014. On this trajectory anything is possible, especially if voters place a greater premium on economic stability the nearer we get to an election.

That said, Fine Gael will have to work hard to grind out the extra points needed to return the current Government. Since May, the party has added only two points to its tally, even with the assistance of a giveaway budget. The curve, it appears, is flattening.

How difficult will it be for Fine Gael to keep building support? The trend in how voters reckon they are benefiting financially from the recovery may help answer this.

In each of the past three months, Ipsos MRBI asked the voting public if they felt better off, worse off or had not noticed any change as a result of how the public finances were being managed.

In September, before the budget, 14 per cent felt better off, 40 per cent felt worse off and 45 per cent said they felt no change. When asked again in October (immediately after the budget), more voters judged they were better off, now 17 per cent (up three points) and only 30 per cent felt worse off (a drop of 10 points).

In November, after the budget dust had settled, 17 per cent of voters still felt they were better off, while the “worse off” percentage had crept back up, to 34 per cent, an increase of four points.

Entrenched attitudes

While these findings are not as conclusive as we would like, they show how entrenched voters are in their (largely negative or neutral) attitude towards their own personal financial situation and that when attitudes change it can be a case of two steps forward and one step back.

Ultimately, the election outcome for Fine Gael will be shaped as much by the fortunes of other parties and circumstances as their own policies.

A resurgent Fianna Fáil would prove costly to Fine Gael. Arguably, Fianna Fáil, on 19 per cent, is underperforming and if the party can reach as high as it did in 2013 (26 per cent) or 2014 (25 per cent) the natural consequence will be downward pressure on the Fine Gael vote.

Similarly, Fine Gael’s recent surge has largely been at the expense of Independent candidates and smaller parties, who have seen their combined vote drop from 32 per cent in late 2014 to 23 per cent in this latest poll.

Support for Independents/Others peaked around the time protests over water charges were headline news. The charges issue has not gone away but it has faded sufficiently for Fine Gael to take back control of the narrative. For now.

Fragmented vote Among

the Independents/Others grouping, the vote is quite fragmented, with no single party or alliance an obvious kingmaker in the event that Fine Gael and Labour come up short. Both Anti-Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit Alliance and Shane Ross’s Independent Alliance have 3 per cent support, with the Green Party, Renua and the Social Democrats each attracting 2 per cent of the vote.

Expectations that a change of leadership would renew Labour’s appeal have not been met, not yet at least. Joan Burton’s down-to-earth style, gender and lack of baggage have not encouraged more working-class, female or younger voters to follow Labour. In reality, the demographic profile of a party is rarely influenced by the demographic profile of its leader. Even when Bertie Ahern was at his peak, Fianna Fáil was more popular outside Dublin.

Despite numerous episodes of negative publicity recently, the Sinn Féin vote is proving remarkably resilient, up two points in Thursday’s poll to 21 per cent and in line with its average poll rating over the past four years. With a profile biased towards younger and working-class voters, who are less likely to vote, the challenge, as always for Sinn Féin, will be to translate voting intentions into votes in the forthcoming election.

In the party leader popularity stakes, Gerry Adams (on 30 per cent, up four points) ranks behind only Enda Kenny (33 per cent, up two points), and ahead of Micheál Martin (29 per cent, down one point) and Joan Burton (28 per cent, down one point).

An election early next year is confirmed and thoughts have now turned to coalition options. The possibility or probability that Fine Gael will need to look to Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin to form a government raises questions about compatibility.

From a Fine Gael voter perspective, just 13 per cent regard Fianna Fáil as the least appealing coalition partner, whereas 59 per cent see Sinn Féin as the least attractive option, according to Thursday’s poll. Maybe neither would be acceptable to Fine Gael voters, but there may be hard choices to be made in the new year considering that Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil added together have a greater share of the vote than Fine Gael and Labour combined. Damian Loscher is managing director of Ipsos MRBI