Poll shows voters unlikely to say No in protest

People who are dissatisfied with the Government can separate this dissatisfaction from their views on other issues, writes Richard…

People who are dissatisfied with the Government can separate this dissatisfaction from their views on other issues, writes Richard Sinnott

When the first Irish Times/MRBI poll of the Nice II campaign revealed that satisfaction with the Government had plummeted, it was widely assumed this development would have a severe adverse effect on the Yes vote.

Stories of Yes canvassers being verbally assaulted about Government economic policy or about the outcome of the Flood tribunal seemed to confirm the picture of a vengeful electorate waiting to have a go at the Government.

The Labour Party leader even felt the need to appeal directly to voters not to punish the Government but to hold their fire until the local and European elections.

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Notwithstanding the alarm on the Yes side and of, at the very least, schadenfreude on the No side, the signs are that the collateral damage from the Government's difficulties has been limited.

None of the polls that have probed the issue (Irish Times/ MRBI, Sunday Independent/IMS and Star/Lansdowne) have come up with any substantial evidence showing that the increased dissatisfaction with the Government will translate into a No vote. Even the small proportions of people who mention this as a factor in their decision are probably mostly committed to a No vote for other reasons.

Is it the case then that the current economic and political difficulties have no implications beyond the already registered increase in dissatisfaction with the Government? In order to examine this issue, the Irish Times/MRBI poll included a question on people's trust in a range of political institutions, the question being designed to directly compare with a question asked in a Eurobarometer survey a year ago.

The evidence indicates that events in the interim have affected trust in institutions, but in some unexpected ways. The two institutions with the highest level of public trust have either not been affected at all (in the case of the Civil Service) or have suffered only a modest decline (in the case of the European Union).

Trust in the media has, however, declined sharply. Trust in television, which has tended to be exceptionally high in Ireland in comparison with elsewhere in the EU, is down 32 points and trust in the press is down 20 points. The temptation in the media may be to say the public should not shoot the messenger. A wiser course might be for them to probe a little deeper into the underlying causes of these notable shifts in attitude.

Two of the political institutions have also suffered significant declines. Trust in the Government is down 14 points and trust in the Dáil is down 16 points.

This brings us to the other political institution - the political parties. Remarkably, the trust rating of political parties as such has not changed at all since October-November 2001. One could argue that this is because trust in them does not have anywhere to go, being already at a low point of 28 per cent (note that this rating is significantly higher than the European average).

On the other hand, one would have thought that the post-election and post-Flood fallout would have had some negative impact on trust in political parties. It seems, however, that the Flood revelations were already factored in by public opinion and that official confirmation had no further effect on trust.

This is perhaps the crucial consideration in terms of the potential impact of the economic and political difficulties on the Nice vote.

To the extent that the electorate has come to a considered view on the Nice issue, it has done so over a period of time and against the background of a highly mistrustful view of the political parties and of a fairly sceptical view of the broader political institutions of government and parliament.

Other relevant factors affecting the electorate's view on Nice may well have been its relatively high level of trust in the EU and in the Irish Civil Service. Whatever the influences may have been, the fact that there has been some development in people's views is confirmed by indications in the Irish Times/MRBI polls of a substantial increase in the electorate's confidence in its grasp of the issues raised by the treaty.

In short, dissatisfied citizens and distrustful citizens are not necessarily alienated citizens. Rather, they may be critical citizens who can separate their dissatisfaction with the Government from their views on particular issues. This makes it much less likely that they will lash out blindly at the Government in tomorrow's vote.

Prof Richard Sinnott is Director of the Public Opinion and Political Behaviour research programme at the Institute for the Study of Social Change in UCD