The Cedar Lounge Revolution

They’re still at it… polls show FF losing support, other parties gaining it – but, really really what the electorate wants is a new party! December 23, 2010

You’d think that Fianna Fáíl at 17 per cent and Sinn Féin at 15 per cent – or points near enough – would be sufficiently interesting, but no, someone has to gild the lily. IELB/AK has already dealt with last weeks Irish Times poll itself and some implications. I was sort of amused by his parting line about a Taoiseach’s pension until I thought about and I stopped being amused [no fault there, I hasten to add, of IELB/AK]. He’s also referenced the latest poll here.

‘Gilding the lily’ you ask. Yep, Damien Loscher of Ipsos/MRBI wrote the following analysis of the IT poll last week:

But there is a sense from today’s poll that the change has been more fundamental than we realise. We have hit our iceberg and some voters it seems are now less inclined to rearrange the political deckchairs and may be looking instead for a new political ship to board.

Is there? Where in all this is the evidence for such a contention? Elaine Byrne’s piece last week seemed to say much the same thing and yet on examination there was simply nothing to support this contention.

Again, let’s look at the figures, not with preconceptions but with clear eyes. Loscher argues that:

With the general election fast approaching, the spotlight will shine more brightly than usual on party-leader performance. And what we will find, judging from today’s poll at least, is that voters are generally underwhelmed by the political leadership on offer. Party-leader satisfaction ratings, when averaged across all leaders, have never been lower.

But this focus on party leaders is chimerical to some extent. We don’t vote for leaders, or at least not entirely. It’s not an irrelevant factor – but it’s not the only one, as those of us amazed at how loyal some are to FF or FG will attest. And those of us on the left even less so (though having sat through more than one Ard Fhéis speech by one P. de Rossa I saw little enough dissent with his leadership at the time and more than enough adulation from some quarters).

Indeed there’s no small irony in the complaints that now we’ve moved away from ‘tribal’ politics as it was perceived by some, the sort of Haughey era – and with an echo under Ahern, we’re somehow lacking. The Irish Times was rightly antagonistic to leadership focused politics in the past. How telling that it now seems wedded to this in the present. That in some sense this has become the metric for the effectivity of political parties. But even the following statement seems curiously at odds with what is taking place:

Looking back over the past three years of poll data, it is clear that politics in Ireland has changed. Party loyalties have shifted massively and voters have become disillusioned with their political leadership and its ability to manage the country’s affairs.

One could simply argue that the vote has fractured, a process that has long been in train. Certainly it would seem that the traditional 2.5 party system broke apart in the early 1980s. That’s thirty odd years. And from there onwards, or more precisely 1989, it was impossible for Fianna Fáíl to govern as a majority party. The ramifications of that have take time to be seen. But most obviously it has meant that the luster of Fianna Fáil single-party governance has been replaced with other parties moving into more competitive modes.

Sure, Fine Gael is only 3 or so per cent above it’s 2007 election rating (or a bit better according to RedC), but FG is facing an unusually competitive field with a Labour Party that has added 15 per cent – or so – to its tally from 2007 and a Sinn Féin that has near doubled its poll rating.

And what I find so odd about the talk of new parties is that FF voters are going to new homes. I’d argue that in crude terms some of FF’s public sector and middle class vote has fled to Labour. It may be that some of its more Republican support has gone to Sinn Féin, a Sinn Féin that like Labour in recent times, positioned itself over the last year as the natural home for such voters.

And the crucial statistic, as noted in the piece on Elaine Byrne’s article, that demonstrates no clear appetite for a ‘new’ party, is the fact that Independents/Others are not that much above their vote in 2007 at 11 per cent, though we know that if they sustain 11 per cent they’ll return in significantly greater numbers than are currently represented in the Dáil. And this remains true in the RedC poll at the weekend.

Granted if one looks at undecideds they’re at 25 per cent and are up seven points from the last poll (though as AK/IELB noted the the most recent but one Red C poll which delivered not dissimilar results factored in slippage back from that quarter to FF and found it made a minimal enough impact, and one presumes Ipsos MRBI are doing likewise) . But there is no alternative party waiting in the wings, let alone on the ground. And as noted previously there’s no serious way a ‘new’ party could rev up given the contracting timeline ahead.

And even were the McDowell, Ganley, A.N.Other axis to swing into action – presuming such an axis even existed – what do people seriously expect them to achieve? Ten TDs, Twenty, Thirty? Such talk is delusional and more indicative of the times we live in than any serious political analysis.

On a further point one wonders if a sort of PD redux process took place with sitting TDs crossing to a new formation how that would be received by the electorate. If FF TDs one can imagine the cynicism and scepticism at their actions. If FG, well, what’s in it for them given that on these figures they’re about to make some gains? And where else are these TDs to come from? Is it really credible that a new party could be built around – say – the Mattie McGrath’s or Noel Grealish’s of this world? Does that sound like the exciting new break with business as usual that the media and commentariat keep talking about?

By the way, kudos to Fianna Fáil for recognising that it had to retain at least some base.

The good news for Fianna Fáil in today’s poll is probably confined to the party’s near bulletproof performance among the (relatively unscathed in budget terms) over 65s, where support – at 33 per cent – is almost double its national average.

The intrinsic problematics in only having an ageing base are so self-evident I hardly need to spell them out. Whether FF’s calculation is that as each successive demographic cohort shifts into that category they will translate to FF remains to be seen.

But to be honest that’s the least of their problems now.