For Lefties too Stubborn to Quit
..and yet more volatility extant.
Once the 28% undecideds are excluded, support for Fine Gael is down one point to 24%, while Labour drops two to 11%.
Fianna Fáil loses the top spot, dropping four points to 23%, while Sinn Féin is up one to 21%.
Independents and smaller parties, meanwhile, gain six points to 22%.
By the way, the headline on RTÉ is a classic:
Fine Gael tops new opinion poll
Well, yes… but…
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Perfect encapsulation of the confused state of things with FG, FF, SF and Others in a virtual dead heat at the top. Also proves that the barely concealed media gloating of last week about the return of normal service with FF and FG fighting it out at the top was a bit previous. I’d be encouraged by what the others total means for parties on the left. There’s a lot of panicky chat about the possibility of a populist party on the right mopping up but where are their seats. Right now they’d be very happy to have the foothold in the Dail that the ULA have. And I can’t see why more austerity by right wing parties and the subsequent immiseration of a large percentage of the population is going to persuade many people that what they need is things to be even more right wing.
Eamonnn, in that paragraph you’ve made more sense that all ‘the Left have failed!!’ posts that we keep reading here and elsewhere.
+1
I’d go further, the only way FF can hope to compete is by tilting (albeit cosmetically) leftwards. Otherwise there’s simply no logic to the current situation. FG and LP insufficiently rightwards? Tis rubbish. Now, how far leftwards is a different matter (and it’d be a killer if people fall for the old FF populist line) but it’s clear there’s space for quite a broad spectrum.
We’ve got 28% undecideds (45 or seat Dáil seats, the difference between government or opposition); how many of them won’t vote, how may of the FG/FF/Lab/SF/Others will vote. Being asked in the supermarket, when you’re there anyway, to pick between Coke and Pepsi is one thing. Being asked to walk 15 minutes in the pissing rain to make the same decision, is another. I’m a staunch advocate of banning opinion polls in the weeks leading up to a general election. Who knows how many polls are being done with the results not being published? Would and opinion poll which showed SF on 40%, SP on 8% and ULA on 12% see the light of day? Would it f**k as they’d say at a tribunal. Likewise would a poll which asked: ‘should those earning over 100,000 euro per year pay a third, higher, rate of income tax?’ be splashed over the front page of the Sindo and the SBP?
I think there’s a tendency for some of the less regular polls to go for very – shall we say – atypical results. You know the sort, SF at 24% or likewise FF. And there’s definitely a drumbeat in the media that wants desperately to see FF rise again to higher levels – a sort of ‘safety first’ approach, or ‘stick with what we know’ line. Which of course is just orthodoxy wrapped up with different clothes.
It’s interesting to wonder what happens now to all the votes LP is losing. And as ever… 20% plus for Others etc. That’s a massive chunk of the electorate. Amazing stuff. I konw I’m always saying this but that has now retained its level above 15 per cent for so long that at the next election I’m dubious it’ll dip below that level.
CMK-that’s just pure cynicism-if we tax those on a 100,000 or more..they ‘ll just leave the country. They are the wealth creators and you know that. Without them there are no jobs. I mean,look at all the jobs they’ve created(for people like you and your ilk) over the last four years. Just wear a green jersey and button it. Where is Bartley when you need him? It is the same leftist mumbo-jumbo that has us bankrupt!
would like to see more analysis done into ‘other’ is it anyone but the other 4 parties or is it more refined in that there is a division in to types of independents.
maybe the best way for the left into the dail next time is to stand as an independent or maybe its not as simple as that. and we could be close to an election, if FG drop below 20% which doesn’t look far off there could reasonably be a blood hunt on for an election. does it make a difference if lab drop below 10%?
shinners would be scratching their heads, are they on 20% or 16%. should be looking at the differences in methodology of both companies and there relevance to them. maybe its just a matter of them yoyoing in a downward direction from 20% or there abouts and FF yoyoing in an upward direction from 20% or a bit more to it.
It’s the years in the public sector, Fergal. I’ve lost my moral compass what with all the leeching off the wealth creators!
I agree with Shea. As Wbs says, the consistent 20% plus showing of independents/others means that it’s not a blip or anomaly. So the greatest service a poll could do right now is to give us some kind of approximate breakdown of what that means. Though there might be something in CMK’s hunch that ‘other’ might mean one thing when said to a pollster and another when it comes to the effort of actually voting.
With these polls at the moment you can run any headline you want. You could for example run a story, ‘Sinn Fein running neck with both FG and FF, what an achievement for Adams,’ which would have as much validity as last weeks’ ‘the amazing comeback of FF.’
“Independents and others” can mean a lot of different things in different contexts. In Kerry, it could mean some generation or other of Healy-Rae, in Tipp it could mean Lowry, in working class Dublin it could mean ULA, in south Dublin it could mean Shane Ross, in Italy it could mean a comedian.
They key point is that collectively, all of the above are bigger than either SF or Labour, but also within touching distance of the traditional parties of the right. It’s definitely the fragmentation of the old post-Civil War certainties, just not on lines previously forecasted.
drnight dub yeah thats fair and its an interesting point about civil war politics not breaking down on predicted lines. say though if all the combined popularity is broken down to each independent, surly with other so high we have passed the point where all support or even possibly the majority of support for some independents is concentrated in the constituency they are currently elected in. for people out side lowerys constituency or healy raes or ross or joan collins or flanagan who are impressed with those individuals but those individuals are not standing in their consituency how is that vote going to translate. until the polling companies start analyzing other in a more detailed breaked down then the polls aren’t really a snap shot of anything.
just to add the chaos of that may turn out to be brilliant or a dull thud.
The collapse of FF in the last election represented a political earthquake. Another is now taking place. FG +Lab have now fallen by almost twenty points. The three parties FF+ FG + Lab , which dominated Irish politics since the civil war,have fallen by 15 points to 58%.
The independents and others are a disparate group. As I have pointed out previously, the 22% for Independents underestimates the improvement from the last election (15.4%). The national vote for independents in elections as opposed to opinion polls is inflated by about 4% by many local and single issue candidates who have no expectation of election. It can be safely said that support for established independents has doubled since the last election.
Economic and political crisis always leads to political polarisation. The emergence of new political forces on the right and on the left is inevitable. The votes for others in the current poll and the 28% for “undecideds” are a prefiguration of this inevitability.
Wait to see the media campaign to establish a ‘grand coalition’ to save the country etc. (and thwart the voters).
It says volumes about the contempt of most commentators for the voters that ‘populist’ seems to be the insult de jour.
Yep – the Suddeutsche Zeitung nearly had an (print-or-pixel) aneurism at the result of the Italian election. It reminds one of the way the upper class Roman commentators use to write about the ‘plebs’.
Without the literary or philosophical panache.
Are there odds for that available yet?
Just a cautionary note. The core votes before “undecideds” are excluded were FG 17, FF 17, Lab 8, Sinn Féin 15,Others including Greens 15. The higher figures are generated based on the assumption that “undecideds” will be distributed in roughly the same proportions as happened traditionally. When a political earthquake is taking place, this is a very unsafe assumption.
Great point. Remarkable how high SF are by that schema, and how low FG (and perhaps FF).
It IS a great point. With a core vote of well under 50% for the traditional top three, there obviously is some kind of realignment taking place. Something is going on here but I don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?
[...] only to a point. I think comments here from both Eamonn Cork and CMK, amongst others on this thread http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/the-latest-polll/ point up the problems in contemporary polling. Both note the lack of definition. There’s 1 in 5 [...]