The Cedar Lounge Revolution

My apologies for harping on about this (in addition to the US Presidential campaign), but the numbers in the Irish Times poll on Lisbon today are worth close examination. Overall 35% of voters are voting Yes, 18% intend to vote No and 47% remain undecided. The Yes vote is up 9%, the No vote is up 8 points and the Undecideds are down from 64% in January.

As the Irish Times notes:

The result clearly reflects the urgency that has been injected into the Yes campaign since Brian Cowen took over as Taoiseach 10 days ago. The Yes side now has a lead of almost two to one with four weeks to go to polling day.

And the Cowen effect?

The poll shows that the hardening of the Yes vote is due to a surge of support among Fianna Fáil voters who are now in favour of the treaty by 47 per cent to 10 per cent. Green voters are also strongly in favour but Fine Gael voters are almost evenly split while Sinn Féin voters are opposed.

I find the idea that Green voters support the Treaty strongly near-inexplicable, unless their formerly critical stance was simply that – a stance. The Fine Gael vote is odd, but perhaps the resistance of farmers goes some way to explain it.

The age breakdown is interesting too…

Older people were much more positively disposed towards voting Yes, with 44 per cent of the over-65s in favour of the treaty and just 11 per cent against.

That compares to a Yes figure of 25 per cent among the 18 to 25s, where 20 per cent intend to vote No.

It’s dangerous to generalise, but I’ll give it a go. Is it possible that the offspring of the Tiger years are indifferent to such matters? Who knows?

Crucially, perhaps, for the future of the Treaty:

On the No side, the failure to understand what the treaty is about emerged as the biggest reason for taking that side, while safeguarding Ireland’s neutrality came as the second most important reason for a No vote.

Other important reasons given were that the bigger countries or east European countries had too much influence, keeping Irish identity and helping farmers in the world trade talks.

And who understands it? Only 6% claim to have a good understanding, 23% say they have some grasp, 31% are vaguely aware and 38% say they don’t know. A bit of effort wouldn’t go amiss here on the part of the population, to be honest. But a clear strategy for the No campaign emerges in the final weeks.

And finally?

However, when asked which of two statements came closest to their view, 43 per cent said Ireland should do all it could to unite fully with the EU while 38 per cent said Ireland should do all it could to protect its independence from the EU and 18 per cent had no opinion.

Now that is a change, and again, I can’t help but feel part of that comes down to a residual sense of the good times. Certainly, growing up in the 1970s and very early 1980s, the EEC/EC seemed amongst my peer group to be regarded as much more a positive than a negative force. Not least because it seemed to support some of the underpinnings which allowed the society to modernise. That clearly has changed. Perhaps that’s an aspect of trying to come to grips with supranational structures, perhaps a fear of encroachment of economic and cultural areas, perhaps a sense that we can do it alone after the last decade. All will feed into the eventual Referendum result.

That said, a strong FF showing will probably do the trick. Cowen must be hoping his newfound popularity survives the month. Fingers crossed down Government buildings way.