Fine Gael within touching distance of overall majority

THIS TIME next week it will be all over bar the counting. All attempts at predicting or polling results will be set at naught once ballot boxes are opened and there are real votes to be counted.

Winners will be congratulated and lifted shoulder high while losers will leave quietly to absorb the reality of defeat.

It is looking like an increasing number of those winners will be Fine Gaelers. All national polling since last weekend suggests that Fine Gael has real momentum at this crucial stage of the campaign. The picture from the various constituency polls published in the last week is more confused, but all suggest the party is set for dramatic gains.

Three Red C polls published since February 1st put Fine Gael on an average of 37 per cent. The last MRBI poll for The Irish Times put Fine Gael at 33 per cent. This week’s Millward Brown poll had them at 38 per cent.

This inevitably raises the question whether Fine Gael could win sufficient seats to govern without Labour, either as a minority government supported by Independents or on its own with an overall majority.

The answer to that question has to be yes. There is a prospect that we are about to have a Fine Gael-only government. Not only could the party surge further in the five days left before polling but, even on current support, the seat-bonus available to larger parties in our system could propel Fine Gael close to or over the line to single-party government.

Although we operate a proportional representation system, it is not entirely proportionate because it operates in constituencies which have only three, four or five seats.

Strictly speaking all parties should get the same percentage of seats for their vote – that is for every 10 per cent of the vote achieved, a party should strictly get 16.6 seats.

However, because the size of the constituencies is relatively small and the spread of support for the smaller parties in particular geographically uneven, the larger parties always get a greater portion of the seats than that to which their first preference vote should strictly entitle them.

If they polled 38 per cent in a precisely proportionate system Fine Gael would be entitled to only 63 seats. However, previous election experience suggests they would actually get something like 76 or 78 seats.

The shifts in voter behaviour in this election will be of an order never before seen in this country. And with Fine Gael the only large party and Fianna Fáil at somewhere between a half and a third of its previous size, Fine Gael could get an even more dramatic seat-bonus and possibly achieve an overall majority on 38 per cent. The absence of precedent for this scenario leaves us in the dark as to its likely effect. Much will depend on the level of vote management the party manages to achieve and the extent to which voters leaving Fianna Fáil switch to Independents rather than Fine Gael.

The other thing for which we have no precedent is large-scale Fianna Fáil eliminations during counts. If, as might be expected, Fine Gael benefits disproportionately from the large number of Fianna Fáil transfers in this election then Fine Gael gains will be even more dramatic.

While the votes of many core Fianna Fáil supporters are plumpers, in that they merely vote the party ticket and stop, they are less likely to do so when the party has only one or two candidates.

Fianna Fáil voters have shown some pattern of transferring to coalition partners recently. But with the Progressive Democrats no longer in existence and the relationship with the Green Party greatly soured that will not be a factor this time.

Faced with Fine Gael’s campaign surge, Labour had a number of options. It could have gone for Enda Kenny and tried to tap into public apprehension about his capacity to do the job of taoiseach unchaperoned. However like Fianna Fáil, Labour has come to realise that the Kenny factor will not decide this election. The other option available to Labour was to major on the instability to which a Fine Gael minority government, dependent on a collection of colourful but high maintenance Independents, would give rise.

Talking up this fear of instability is a double-edged sword for Labour, however, since it is as likely to prompt voters to give Fine Gael enough support to allow it to govern unencumbered by Independents as it is to prompt them to vote for Labour.

The final option open to Labour was to attack Fine Gael policies and in particular to focus on the party’s support for austerity measures. Labour has now adopted this approach in several negative newspaper adverts of a type unseen here for many elections. Labour is likely to intensify its attacks against Fine Gael in the remaining days, including in Tuesday night’s leaders’ debate. However, this approach also comes with risks for Labour. Squabbling between Labour and Fine Gael over policy may make voters apprehensive about a Fine Gael-Labour coalition and prompt them to opt for single-party government.

Recent polls are also worrying for Fianna Fáil. The party had come reluctantly to accept that the voters were preparing to give them an electoral kick in the shins.

Now the party must realise that the electorate plans to aim that kick somewhat higher, and deliver it with greater force than previously anticipated.

It will take Fianna Fáil a long time to recover, if it ever does, from the injuries it will sustain in this election.