Surge in support for Fianna Fail to 63%

Fianna Fail is winning the support of almost two-thirds of the electorate - 63 per cent - in the latest Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll.

It is surpassing, by 6 percentage points, its record-breaking performance of 57 per cent in the immediate wake of the brokering of the Belfast Agreement last month, to register the highest level of support for any party in the 25-year history of opinion polls.

The main finding of this poll, which was conducted among a national quota sample of 1,000 electors at 100 sampling points in every constituency in the State last Tuesday and Wednesday, is that the Fianna Fail party is garnering support across the board from all other parties. If the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, were not the cautious politician that he is, he would be tempted to go to the country.

The state of the parties, excluding the 18 per cent undecideds, is: Fianna Fail 63 per cent, up 6 percentage points in a month; Fine Gael 18 per cent, down 2 points; Labour 9 per cent, down 2 points; Sinn Fein 3 per cent, down 1 point; Green Party 2 per cent, unchanged; Progressive Democrats 1 per cent, down 2 points; Democratic Left 1 per cent, unchanged; Workers' Party 1 per cent, up 1 point; and Others 2 per cent, unchanged.

Fianna Fail's support is fairly evenly spread across all provinces, classes and age groups. The party's core vote has also increased from 49 per cent to 51 per cent in the current poll.

Although Sinn Fein is registering a 1 percentage point drop in support since its historic decision to endorse the Belfast Agreement and join a Northern assembly, it is recording 5 per cent support in Dublin and 10 per cent among the 18- to 24-year-old age group. Its core vote, 3 per cent, remains unchanged in the month.

The scale of the opinion polling record now being set by Fianna Fail can be gauged from the fact that at 57 per cent support last month it surpassed the level recorded by the party under Mr Jack Lynch in the run-up to the historic general election victory in 1977. Fianna Fail has not won an overall majority since then.

Fianna Fail's core vote has also increased from 49 per cent to 51 per cent in the latest poll.

There has been an insignificant drop of 1 percentage point in the level of satisfaction with the Government in the past month, down from 73 per cent to 72 per cent. The level of dissatisfaction, 19 per cent, has also dropped by 1 point. The undecideds are 9 per cent, up 2 points.

The rating of party leaders was not tested in the current poll.