Latest polls should give party pep in their step ahead of pre-budget talks with Labour, writes NOEL WHELAN
IN AUGUST 1994 John Bruton’s approval ratings as leader of the opposition was 33 per cent. On November 15th, 1994, he became taoiseach. The first MRBI opinion poll on Bruton’s new administration was published almost exactly 100 days later and showed a satisfaction rating for the new taoiseach of 53 per cent.
“Office maketh the man” and the office of Taoiseach is making Enda Kenny a more substantial and a more popular politician. Before February’s general election Kenny’s approval rating was measured at about 39 per cent.
Now four months later he has surged to 65 per cent. During the campaign when Fine Gael spokespeople were questioned about Kenny’s apparent lack of popularity they used to cite the John Bruton precedent.
However, the transformation in Enda Kenny’s standing in the minds of voters is even more remarkable.
What is surprising is not that, as Taoiseach, Enda Kenny is now at 65 per cent – many previous taoisigh have polled at or above this figure in their first months – it is that his standing with the electorate was so low just before they elected him leader.
The Fine Gael surge is even more significant than Kenny’s rise. Fine Gael got 36 per cent of the first preference vote in the Dáil election last February.
In a Red C poll for the Sunday Business Post at the end of April they got 39 per cent. By the end of May that had risen again to 41 per cent.
In the Millward Brown Lansdowne poll published in the Irish Independent this week Fine Gael was at 42 per cent.
These figures mean that in the very unlikely event of an election anytime soon Fine Gael would win an overall majority.
My guess is that given the enduring weakness of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael on 42 per could win in excess of 90 Dáil seats.
This is all theoretical of course but these figures should give Fine Gael Ministers a spring in their step as they set about pre-budget negotiations with Labour ministers.
Labour have held their own in the polls but neither Gilmore nor his party have been the beneficiary of any of the honeymoon bounce which Fine Gael is enjoying.
If Labour were to threaten Fine Gael with walking on some budgetary issue Fine Gael Ministers might, at least momentarily, be tempted to say “off with you”.
According to these polls Fianna Fáil is still stuck on 16 per cent. They should be relieved that they haven’t fallen further since February. The party is still traumatised by the electoral collapse and can do no more than go through the motions of parliamentary opposition.
Such is the enduring antagonism towards Fianna Fáil that every time the party garners attention it is more likely to irritate than attract voters. The best thing Micheál Martin and his party could do is to lie low for the summer months and hope for a better environment in the autumn in which to design a survival strategy.
Of course only limited significance can be attached to party poll ratings so soon after an election.
Even less significance can be attached to the various polls that have already been published on the presidential election.
The field is still much too cluttered and confused and the voters have only superficially engaged with the merits of the various candidates.
The Millward Brown Lansdowne results also come with an additional health warning. Their poll sample on this question was only 454 rather than the usual 1,000.
The surveys were conducted last Saturday and last Monday.
However, the question about the presidency had to be changed on Sunday night to reflect not only the fact that Michael D Higgins was selected as the Labour candidate and Fergus Finlay was out of the race, but also that Avril Doyle was coming into the race.
The polling company could only therefore rely on and publish the results gathered from those surveyed on Monday. They were upfront about this in Thursday’s Irish Independent.
Those presidential candidates who are in the field longest did best in the poll. For several months now David Norris has been the most high-profile contender, more recently in ways that might have been expected to damage his support but he still topped the poll with 21 per cent.
Michael D dominated Monday’s coverage of the race and was next with 19 per cent. Mairéad McGuinness was the first Fine Gael contender out of the traps so she was next with 10 per cent.
Gay Mitchell launched his campaign a few weeks ago and his polling at 2 per cent was surprisingly low especially when contrasted with former MEP Pat Cox who got 7 per cent, even though he had only formally declared the week before.
Avril Doyle’s rating was also surprisingly low on 3 per cent.
Of the remaining candidates, the order in this week’s poll was Seán Gallagher, Mary Davis and then Niall O’Dowd, each of whom have, to date, made only a limited impression. Their focus is on the councillors or Oireachtas members who make up the nominating electorate rather than on the general electorate.
I should declare at this stage that I have known Seán Gallagher personally for many years – about which more another week.
Fine Gael has been the largest Irish party in the European Parliament since 2004. They have been the largest party in local government since 2009.
After the recent general election they are – by far – the largest party in the Oireachtas. They now also have all the momentum in the polls.
It is their performance in Government that will ultimately determine whether Fine Gael can sustain this momentum but, undoubtedly, their choice of candidate and campaign for the presidency will also have a real impact.