ANALYSIS:If this had been a general election, the swing to the Opposition would have been much greater, writes GARRET FITZGERALD.
THERE WAS nothing surprising about the outcome of the election. It was inevitable that Fianna Fáil and the Greens would be heavily defeated – although, as I forecast here two weeks ago, in the local elections both the loss of votes by Fianna Fáil and the gain in votes by Labour were somewhat less than that predicted by the final TNS/mrbi poll.
Quite a few years ago the TNS/mrbi correctly came to the conclusion that the electorate was consistently claiming a higher level of support for Fianna Fáil in pre-election polls than they would actually accord in the polling booths, and the exceptional accuracy of their polls since then has reflected their wisdom in incorporating an adjustment to allow for this distorting factor.
It is understandable that this polling organisation felt it would be somewhat arbitrary to drop this adjustment just for this election. But the fact is that the reasons why people for so long overstated to pollsters their intention to vote Fianna Fáil disappeared during the past year.
Moreover, it was always likely that in local elections Fianna Fáil candidates, because of their work at local level, would get somewhat more votes than their party’s aspirants for Dáil membership would have secured had this been a general election. That is why I warned two weeks ago that in these local elections Fianna Fáil would do better and their opponents worse than the last TNS/mrbi poll suggested.
In other words, and this point has been consistently missed by commentators, I believe that the local election results significantly understate – I repeat, understate – the scale of the shift in national sentiment from Fianna Fáil to the Opposition that would have shown itself had this been a general election.
In particular, these local elections were bound to overstate the swing from Fianna Fáil to Labour because the poll measured the electorate’s desire to vote for Labour, which in many areas was frustrated by the absence of Labour candidates
The local election results also illustrate one of the less recognised features of our multi-seat PR system, viz, the erratic nature of the relationship between votes cast and seats won, which often affects small parties. (Exceptionally, in 2002 it also had a huge impact on Fine Gael, giving it only 18.5 per cent of the seats for 22.5 per cent of the vote, viz, one-fifth less seats than were its due).
Thus, in 1992 the PDs won 10 seats, but in 1997 they won only four seats, despite the fact that they secured an identical share of the vote to two decimal points, (4.68 per cent), on both occasions. In these local elections it was the Greens’ turn to suffer from what I can only call this PR virus. Their vote fell by 38 per cent but their seat loss was twice that figure, viz, 83 per cent.
Perhaps at some stage people may wake up to the remarkable capacity of our so-called “proportional representation” system to yield markedly disproportional results.
And what kind of Dáil would a general election be likely to produce if it were held at this time? By applying the pattern of votes cast in the smaller local authority areas to the relevant larger Dáil constituencies, one can get an indication of what a new Dáil would look like if it were to be elected while the electorate are in their present mood.
There are some problems with this process. In particular, one has to face the fact that in local elections far more candidates stand as Independents, or for micro-parties, than are likely to do so in a Dáil election.
Adding together the votes cast for a number of such candidates can give the impression of a large coherent Independent vote – which, in fact, would never rally behind any single candidate in a Dáil election. And, of course, there is no way of knowing to which party, if any, these votes might go in a general election.
Having said that, it is possible to make some kind of an estimate as to how at this moment a general election might go. And, looking individually at each constituency, it is difficult to see how Fianna Fáil could at this moment secure more than 55 seats. Fine Gael could win 65 or more seats, and Labour almost 30 – which would give a coalition of these two parties a very substantial Dáil majority. Sinn Féin would be likely to lose one or two seats, and despite what I have just said, there could be as many Independents as in the present Dáil.
However, these local elections provide only a snapshot of political opinion at a particular moment in time, and given the evidence of volatility of public opinion in recent times, this snapshot may have limited temporal validity.
Finally, I note that Gay Mitchell has said that it was “inappropriate” of me to have expressed an opinion on how people might pass their later preferences in this election.
However, I think that what he was trying to say was that he disagreed with my view. If I had said that Dublin voters should vote No 1 Gay Mitchell, I doubt if he would have complained about me. I am sorry that he was unhappy that I introduced the Lisbon Treaty into a European election, but it did seem to me to be “appropriate”.
And although I think that it would have been better if all those elected to the European Parliament had been supporters of the Lisbon Treaty, I am glad that it was Joe Higgins, (about whom I was happy to hear some of his opponents speaking most warmly on Sunday night), who won the seat rather than the Sinn Féin candidate.