THE PUBLICATION of a pair of presidential opinion polls this week means that we finally have access to hard polling data on all those – and only those – who are actually contesting this election. These polls are all the more important because they come after a full week of campaigning which featured a particularly intensive round of media interviews and debate appearances.
A fall in David Norris’s ratings was inevitable. His performance in most of the media events was overbearing and in some cases was bizarre. It seems that he is still traumatised by the events of 15 years ago and certainly by the manner in which the controversies erupted over his clemency letters last August. He may have had physical rest during his few weeks’ holiday from the campaign but he appears not to have come to terms with the letters controversy or to have shaped a coherent strategy with which to address it before he re-entered the race.
Norris has been the subject of unfair and inaccurate reporting in some media outlets. The tabloid headline writing about him has in some instances been blatantly homophobic. He has only himself to blame, however, for the fact that his communication about the legal advice on publishing the letters was so chaotic. Those travelling with him confirm that public reaction to him on the stump has been extremely warm. Despite his protestations, however, the polls show that the controversies have got traction with the wider electorate.
Gay Mitchell and his party also have only themselves to blame for his low poll figures. They dismissed the pre-campaign polls as immaterial and spoke of how Adi Roche polled very high before the start of the 1997 campaign only for her support to collapse before polling day. They argued that Mitchell would do the opposite and rise once the campaign began. Instead he has gone the Adi Roche direction.
Fine Gael has had a strong reputation in recent elections for brilliant campaigning. It must therefore be worrying for party members that their leading strategists decided on and then executed their recent series of intemperate attacks on Martin McGuinness in such an inept manner.
As Vincent Browne showed, McGuinness is vulnerable to questioning on his IRA past but the manner and content of the Fine Gael attacks was counterproductive. The suggestion that McGuinness would put off foreign investment was particularly stupid.
Former ministers who have done the St Patrick’s Day circuit in the United States confirm that far from being repelled by McGuinness, many American industrialists see him as a celebrity and even flock to have their picture taken with him.
If the Fine Gael attacks on McGuinness were not co-ordinated and the likes of Phil Hogan and Paul Kehoe were freelancing, then that speaks even greater volumes about the disarray in Fine Gael over this election. Mitchell and his party are now bit players in this contest and potentially more dangerous as a result.
This week’s polls suggest that Mary Davis has slipped slightly. Unfortunately for her, this is occurring just at the point when she needed to get a boost if she were to have any chance of being in the final shake-up.
Dana’s position is unsurprising and unchanged at 6 per cent. Revelations about her citizenship may alter this, but only slightly.
Cumulatively the two polls suggest Martin McGuinness has nudged up. He is at somewhere about 19 per cent, which is impressive. It puts him third on the first count but the polls again confirm how unattractive he is to transfers.
What is important for Michael D Higgins in these polls is not only that he is still ahead but also that he is still well ahead. If the figures in The Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI polls were repeated on October 27th then on a likely total poll of about 1.5 million Higgins would be 70,000 or so votes ahead of Gallagher on the first count.
This would be too wide a gap even for a candidate as transfer-friendly as Gallagher to close on second and subsequent counts. For Gallagher or anyone else to beat Higgins, they need to be ahead of him, or at least much closer to him, after the first count.
Gallagher now has real momentum and may actually manage to close this gap. More people will flock to his events. His fundraising will take a bounce. More volunteers will plug in to his countrywide network. Voters will focus more on what he says and what others have to say about him.
As the candidate on the move, Gallagher will also become the key target for negative comment and campaigning. He can expect this to include a degree of intellectual snobbery and elitism. The other worry for him is that with nothing left to lose, many Fine Gael politicians will feel unleashed to take swipes at the other candidates. They have form when it comes to dirty tricks in presidential elections.
One can already hear murmurs from some Fine Gael quarters about what they call Gallagher’s “vulnerabilities”.
One of the reasons why Gallagher is likely to rise even higher in the polls is because his current share of the Fianna Fáil vote is so surprisingly low. Michael D Higgins is currently attracting almost as many Fianna Fáil votes as Gallagher. Now that he has emerged as the leading non-government candidate, Gallagher’s share of the Fianna Fáil vote is likely to rise dramatically.
Notwithstanding the fact that both Ryan Tubridy and Vincent Browne quizzed Gallagher strongly about his Fianna Fáil past, he is still by far the most attractive candidate to those who describe themselves as Independent and has even managed to attract between one-fifth and a quarter of all Fine Gael voters.
This day three weeks it will all be over, but there is much fun yet to be had in this presidential election.