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Elimination of gap between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin the big takeaway from Irish Times poll

Simon Harris’s first personal rating in polls series is a creditable 38%, the second most popular leader after Micheál Martin and ahead of Mary Lou McDonald

Illustration: Paul Scott
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald. The party has been under serious political pressure on immigration
Pat Leahy's picture
Pat Leahy
Thu May 16 2024 - 06:00

The first Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll since Simon Harris succeeded Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach and the Fine Gael leader brings good news for his party – for the first time in a long time.

With three weeks to go before the local and European elections today’s poll result hands Harris a badly-needed fillip which will help him promote his narrative of revival for Fine Gael, and will – no doubt – enthuse no end the grassroots who are out knocking on doors.

Though satisfaction with the Government slips by four points to 31 per cent, Harris’s first personal rating in the series is a creditable 38 per cent – the second most popular leader after Micheál Martin and ahead of Mary Lou McDonald.

Harris is also likely to be cheered by the fact that a continuation of the current Coalition is the most popular option of voters.

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But it is his party’s rating that is most likely to please the new Taoiseach. Fine Gael’s 23 per cent is on a par with Sinn Féin, the party which has dominated in the polls for the past three years. At the last Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll in February the gap between the two was 9 points; a year ago it was 13 points. A year before that it was 18 points. The closing of the gap is the most obvious takeaway from this poll.

But perhaps a more important trend is the continuation – acceleration even – of the decline in support for Sinn Féin, which must now be causing serious unease in the party.

Just track the numbers in The Irish Times/Ipsos B&A series: in the summer of 2022 Sinn Féin was at 36 per cent; by February of 2023 it was still at 35 per cent. Its average support over the previous 2½ years had been 35 per cent. But then the decline kicked in. Down to 31 per cent in June of last year; uptick in September to 34 before the downward trajectory resumed to 28 in February of this year. And now down a further five points to 23 per cent.

If the trend is always the thing to watch then this trend is pretty well established. A few recent polls elsewhere have suggested a stabilisation of Sinn Féin support, but that is not evident here. It’s the lowest Sinn Féin have been in the series since before the last election, and the first time the party has registered support below the level it won then.

The reasons for the Sinn Féin slump are not captured in the data. But the party has been under serious political pressure on the immigration question, on which it has – like the Government, in fairness – significantly hardened its line in recent months. This development has been constantly audible in the way Sinn Féin TDs proclaim themselves to be “against open borders” – a response, it says, to accusations by its political opponents on the right and, indeed, the far-right.

It makes an exception, of course, for the Border with Northern Ireland but sometimes that has proved tricky to explain, at least in simple terms.

Perhaps the problem is that the hardening of the party’s position on immigration is not hard enough for some of its voters and too hard for others. As pointed out before, the party’s progressive wing (strongly pro-migrant) seems to be in confrontation with its populist wing (sceptical on migration).

It’s probably not just about migration, though. The party faces a challenge – as leading Opposition parties always do – to define what it would do in power, what it means by “change”.

While seeking to reassure middle-ground voters that it would not change any of the things they like – for example, Pearse Doherty was recently reassuring clients of Davy stockbrokers that Sinn Féin would not change the essentials of Ireland’s economic model – the party may have alienated some of those voters who want to see radical changes in the way Ireland is run. Those voters have other options. And some voters are exercising them, it seems.

Fianna Fáil holds steady today, as it has done for a year now. Micheál Martin retains his position as the most popular party leader, and Fianna Fáil will hope to add a few points before polling day. But the stark reality is that the party – having performed well in 2019 – is facing losses in three weeks’ time. With Harris boosted by today’s findings it’s a reminder that the two parties will be rivals for votes.

The smaller parties are bouncing around at the customary level. Labour will be pleased to have ticked up by a point but the movements here are all well within the margin of error. Independents – the beneficiaries of much of the Sinn Féin decline in the past 18 months – are steady on 17 per cent.

The Independents are traditionally the location for voters alienated from the Government parties and unsure of the opposition alternatives – a sort of “plague on all your houses” vote. Today suggests that sentiment remains strong. But it’s hard to characterise it as a single political force – in many respects, it’s quite the opposite. The Independents include some of the most left-wing and some of the most right-wing people in Irish politics. Their enduring strength is another sign of how fractured politics has become.