Bloody hell… that was quick… poll rise for Fianna Fáil or …doing the right thing for the party April 6, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
Well, as Gerry Adams said recently, I don’t like to say I told you so…but… ah well, whatever… (he didn’t say the ‘ah well, whatever’ but he perhaps should have) I think I mentioned during the week that we would more than likely see a poll increase for Fianna Fáil. Inconveniently the Sunday Business Post website hasn’t been updated and I haven’t nipped out to purchase a copy, but lo… RTÉ reports:
A new opinion poll shows a five-point increase in support for Fianna Fáil since the Taoiseach announced he is to resign.
Never!
Fianna Fáil support, at 40%, is up five points since last week, while Fine Gael drop two to 28%, Labour is unchanged at 11%, the Greens gain one to 9%, Sinn Féin drops three to 6%, the PDs are stuck at 1%, and Independents and Others drop two to 5% support.
We’ll get back to that… but here – to my mind – is the key political point…
22% of voters though Mr Ahern should not have resigned, while 31% say they did not want him to go but he had no option after recent revelations. 20% thought it was about time he resigned, and 24% thought he should have gone as soon as the Mahon Tribunal began investigating his affairs.
Ahern, never a man to go against the grain must have had indications of this sentiment. With the combined negative ratings providing an overwhelming majority, between ‘no option but to go’, ‘about time he resigned’ or ’should have gone long before’ and with a mere 22% still onside…well, that was it. The right time to go. As late as he could leave it without appearing to be hanging on for dear life, sooner than he had to absolutely go and therefore able to control the optics of the decision.
And this poll was taken just 24 hours after the news broke.
The snap poll was carried out on Thursday, just a week since the last Red C poll for the Sunday Business Post.
500 voters were questioned, just half the normal sample, so the margin of error is higher, but the shift in opinion is still striking.
Even accepting some error we can assume that this is a credible reflection of public opinion. What about the other finding?
Asked who would make the better Taoiseach, 63% opt for Brian Cowen compared to 24% per cent who prefer Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny. 13% either do not know or do not like either option.
And there’s the rub. Kenny is now going to be compared and contrasted not with Ahern (who bested him on many many different political axis – not least in the pre-Election RTÉ debate), but with a much less contentious political figure of Cowen.
I wonder how long before the questions are asked seriously in the context of Kenny’s leadership. May 2007 is going to seem like ancient political history soon enough.
Meanwhile the party results provide no end of food for thought. Is Sinn Féin locked into a cycle of being perpetually held hostage to a soft FF vote which splits to it in theory but in practice returns to FF when push comes to shove? And is the same true of the Independents and others? Moreover it points to a dynamic where Fine Gael will always suffer in the face of a credible Fianna Fáil. After all, if Fine Gael couldn’t capitalise in May 2007 with a clearly wounded Ahern when precisely are we meant to believe that it can? And for the left this poses other problems since FF seems to retain its ability to poach on that front, at least from Sinn Féin. And while yes, our putative coalition or alliance of left forces, The Green Party, Labour and Sinn Féin remain actually quite strong as a block – only two percentage points lower than Fine Gael (and who is to say how a real alliance might impact on the FG vote?) … one of them is locked in government and two of them have an – ahem – developing relationship.
So, will the FF bounce last? My read is that it will as long as FG remains in its current configuration. And that results in another question. What can FG do? We’ve had a week when it has been apparent that like or loathe them FF has no shortage of political heavy weights in its Cabinet who could plausibly present themselves as Taoiseach. What of FG? Who on the front bench other than Kenny appears strong enough? To my mind only Richard Bruton, and that tells its own story. For the media the emergence of the Young Turks spoke of a renewal. I don’t see it as such. None of them present a face to the electorate that would be sufficiently ameliorative to win sufficient votes for FG in an election. Worse again they are disliked by Labour. And meanwhile, serene and relatively undisturbed FF steam on towards the coronation of the uncrowned Cowen.
It just goes to show that the best way to increase your share in the polls is to be in the news.
On the day of Bertie the Great, and Cowen the Brilliant – FF can just about recover to their General Election showing…
…
Excellent analysis.
Kenny, I believe, will be gone by September. He will be found wanting, again, during the run up on the Lisbon Reform Treaty referendum (I haven’t either seen or heard him say diddly squat). The question is whether FG bounces him out of sheer frustration with the obvious danger of one of the “young Turks” jostling themselves to the top spot or wait and try a post Local/Euro election succession process.
I agree that looking at it now the only alternative FG leader is Richard Bruton who is gifted with a steady, logically and measured approach, particularly when it comes to economics and finance. He could be the man that the undecideds will lean to as the economy flaps around for the next few years.
The dark horse is Brian Hayes, after being humbled in the 2002 election, he knuckled down to grafting out a vote in DSW in the 2007 elections, and notwithstanding his emotionality in relation to SF, he has matured much more than expected. If he can continue to smooth of that default smugness that he lapses into he may well be the leader than FG need.
And he is a Dub, an even more important consideration now that FF are going to be culchie heavy particularly in the big jobs.
Overall any assessment of where the challenge to FF short to medium term dominance will come from would conclude there is no credible one.
The other main opposition party, Labour, is beset with a dearth of local activists and grafters and seems content to patiently wait for the Irish people to come to there senses and vote for them. They need to surprise people and although they have some promising emerging representatives; Alex White and Dominic Hannigan to name but two, they are more of the same for the party. They need to reassess their medium term goals, focusing less on getting into govt and more, much more, on replacing FG as the main opposition.
As you observe SF seem to be locked in trying to attract a soft FF vote to be able even to break into double figures. However the fundamentals in SF I think look strong. Despite their appalling election they retain a strong base, are well funded and attract a young vote. Lisbon will be good for them and their messaging seems, for the first time in the south, modern and cliché free. Like Labour they have some good Dublin based councillors, Eoin O’Broin and Killian Forde, who would appear to be able to appeal to that crucial soft FF vote. Yet four seats is a long, long, long way off being relevant.
Crucially though a choppy economy opens up possibilities for the left, though both Labour and Sinn Fein need to hold the line. As they both nudge into the centre it becomes imperative that they be cogniscent that a dodgy economy affords them opportunities to sell the benefits of a left leaning economy.As importantly it will give them to chance to say, repeatedly “I told you so” and undermine the perception of soft FF voters as they (FF) being the only qualified party on the economy.
All that said the outlook is grim and FF domination appears obvious for the next 10-15 years. After that period it’s just weather forecasting.
Politics… you must have missed the resignation by Bertie after months of media pressure regarding financial questions. I think that is a somewhat different political context than that which you suggest.
Dec, I’d pretty much agree with you. It’s funny, I remember R. Bruton back in the 1980s braving community halls in Finglas with his very much right of centre message and getting a tough time of it (rightly so
), but I admired him for the fact he was willing to go out and say what he believed. He’s moderated his approach in the intervening time, or perhaps more accurately the political centre has shifted rightwards. And still he’s the only one with anything like the necessary gravitas. I really think FGs problem – and I say that with all due respect – is that they’ve pinned their hopes over the years to the idea that displacing their nearest electoral rival involves making them out to be ‘illegitimate’ either in terms of corruption or due to a sort of near subversive nationalism. The latter was gone by the end of the Haughey era and the former fades to some degree with Ahern. And then what’s left? Policies which are largely indistinguishable and after that ineffable competing ethos… FG can’t really pitch left, it’s not in the nature of their base (and arguably never was despite G. Fitzgerald and a number of social democratically inclined figures). It can’t pitch too far right…
And I think you’re right, one is looking at FF domination at least for the next 5 to 10.
Well, short of some catastrophic and unlikely events involving Cowen
FF are beginning more and more to look like the Permanent Revolutionary Party alright; the only note of caution (for them, cautious optimism for everyone else) would be this – we have a much more more mobile electorate than ever before in this country. As well as inward immigrants, we also have what, by now, must be a few constituencies worth of transplanted Dubs all over Leinster, with no ties to where they now live, but whose party loyalties might not survive the transplant from the city; there’s a big difference between FF in Northside Dublin and FF in Offaly or Westmeath – especially as the leadership moves from one to the other.
A lot of these people outside the half- doughnut of the M50 have effectively privatised their social existence; spending a few hours a day commuting doesn’t help, and, instead of GAA or going to the local, they’re more likely to spend their weekends shopping, or do taking kids to non- sporting leisure activities; they drink at home to avoid driving – since the estates they live are usually too far out of town to walk to the pub, and rent DVDs.
As such, their political are likely to be more mediated than has normally been the case here; more dependent on what they read in the papers – and a lot of middle- class guys read tabloids routinely and unashamedly these days ‘for the sport’ -and what they here on the radio on the commute, rather than ‘parish-pump’ stylee.
Consequently, the possibility of a party of the left or the right making a sudden impact has to be greater than before; an irish equivalent to the New Labour swing – where places that had never been Labour suddenly bought the message – or the Obama crusade is not to be discounted; but nor is something like the emergence of a sharp new right as in Austria in the ’90s and Holland in ’00s – another feature of the flight to the suburbs is an entirely exaggerated fear of crime in ‘the inner city’ and while at the moment, its ‘Gangland’ that middle Ireland is afraid of, it wouldn’t take more than a few incidents, and the proper media response for it to take a racist complexion.
You’re both right, though; Labour can’t stay where it is: whereas FG, unpalatable as it may be, has the first faint blush of ideology, Labour can’t just sit there like the ever hopeful spinster.
Worse again they are disliked by Labour.
Possibly the understatement of the day, WBS
Strangely, I think Cowen – at least in any honeymoon period – could be far more attractive to many in Labour than Berite was. And the big worry is that could scupper any hope (distant as it may be) of a broad left alliance.
But the one big unknown is Cowen himself. I still have no idea where he’s going to pitch politically. I know the Greens are very lukewarm about him, but beyond that, who knows? Will he be the pseudo-social democrat in a continuing prosperity or the brutal public service assassin of a major recession. External economic factors may well determine who Taoiseach Cowen is.
Inconveniently the Sunday Business Post website hasn’t been updated
And why is it that it’s impossible to read the Sunday papers online on, you know, a Sunday? The Post is never updated until late in the day or tomorrow; the Tribune – possibly the worst newspaper website in the entire world – is always down; the Times (Ireland edition) isn’t even online anymore. Only the godforsaken Sindo is readily available. WTF is wrong with this country that we can’t even get the Sunday papers online.
Sorry, this just really annoys me.
And navigation on the Sindo is a nightmare… it’s impossible sometimes to work out who the author is… (particularly annoying when it comes to the work of the good Senator…
). But it’s genuinely is crazy stuff. I gave up on the Trib a fair while ago both in printed and net version.