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Dublin Key to Fine Gael’s Last 2 Weeks
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour Party, Polls 
A week or so ago, as we were in the midst of a deluge of polls, I hazarded that Fine Gael may be on route to a majority or very close to it. While legitimate doubts were raised at the time, the trend for FG since has been upward and tonights margin-of-error beating 3% rise suggests that Fine Gael are doing really well at building momentum into the final two weeks.
The form team in this regard is Fianna Fail circa 2002, when with 41% of first preferences they ended up a few hundred votes shy of a majority. The 42% threshold may indeed yield FG their majority, but some hurdles remain. Labour in Dublin are the first of these. Since the local elections, Labour’s hope for a large rise in seats has resided on building in Dublin on their success at local level, turning their status as the biggest party in Dublin at local level into two seats in many constituencies.
That hope, and the fact that they remain in a strong (if not insurmountable) position in Dublin gives the lie to a week of spats between the two major parties. For Fine Gael, especially for the likes of Noonan and Varadker in particular, the numbers bear out that for FG to get close to a majority with 42% of the vote, Labour’s position in Dublin has to be eroded. 46 seats are available in Dublin, if FG were to come second or leave little or no gap between themselves and Labour, it could mean the difference between 72-75 seats and 80-83 seats.
When this is added to a gap between the parties on fiscal and social issues, it puts the tit-for-tat of the last week into stark relief. They are at odds on the IMF, fiscal management, growth projections, the health service and other issues. It won’t stop a deal being done, but if FG can get away without Labour, they will do all they can to do it.
This weekend marks the point, with two weeks left, when most voters begin to pay attention in standard elections, while we can argue the public are switched on already (for the past two years almost), there is still a feeling that the final two weeks are the formative period – when decisions on preferences are made and stuck to. It will be interesting to see how the parties try to communicate with voters in this time – whether debates, policies or slip-ups will swing people in behind anyone other than FG.
It is certainly all to play for, but we can expect to see plenty more spat between Fine Gael and Labour as the focus for the bigger party zones in on governing alone. Dublin is the key to FG’s last two weeks and they are sure to know it. Kenny will be taking part in the 5-way leader’s debate on The Frontline on Monday but if last week’s debate were the place to frame the debate, Mondays will be the place to get a single, memorable sound-bite.
Though Martin is loath to utter them (pull the other one), the soundbite will be the best way to ensure that something is achieved from a 5 person all-in with Pat Kenny (apologies for the unfortunate mental images). The challenge is there too for Labour, they have lost a lot of ground from their peak. Constant attacks from FF and FG have hurt them, added to by the failure (see Jan O Sullivan on the banks Weds on Today with PK) of front benchers to get the fiscal policy across under cross-examination. If this is repeating on the doors, Dublin is a battleground for them.
In the 2009 local elections, the breakdown was as follows (FG first, Lab second);
Dublin City: 18% / 29%
Fingal: 20% / 25%
SoDub Co: 27% / 25%
DL/R’down: 34% / 22%
The difference between 2009 figures and the overall level of support for parties in Dublin is difficult to assess at a remove, one would need to spend a lot of time with the breakdown of boundaries for the election. This is due to the mixture of 3/4 seaters in many council areas. However a top-level analysis suggests that Labour have grown their overall support in Dublin’s suburbs, or have powered ahead in the Dublin City area. I think it unlikely to assume Labour on 40% in the Dublin City area and rather more likely that they have added on a few percentage points in the outer Dublin areas encompassed by Fingal, South Dublin Co. and Dun Laoghaire. Though only a few.
For Fine Gael the figures are much more promising, aside from Dun Laoghaire and their strong position in South Dublin, they didn’t break 30% in Dublin in 2009. Therefore the implication of the current 30% figure for Dublin suggests they have solidified their presence in South Dublin but lifted support in the other three council areas. They need it.
The current figures are a statistical dead heat. They are not sufficient for Fine Gael to swing into overall majority territory. The major problem they face is the Dublin is a mixture of 3-4-5 seaters, rather than a smaller number of 5 seaters. They will have to work extremely hard to take 2 seats in 3 or 4 seaters. They have shown capable of taking 3 seats in Dublin South, but the dog-fight in Dun Laoghaire should see them suffer unless there is a ‘wave election’ for Fine Gael (not something I am ruling out).
My feeling is that Fine Gael have made up a lot of ground in Dublin, but may need a much larger overall lead on Labour to get results – smaller seat numbers per constituency are disproportional. To convert a percentage into seats requires a lot of organisation and luck.
I fully agree ~ the squeze is on Labour from both FF and FG. I believe that many of the undecideds and minor party and Independent first prefs will also revert to FF or FG, rater than Labour. People seem to want a decisive outcome to this election, and the past decades have shown the innately ruinous tendency of coalitions between parties with divergent ideologies.
Interesting that Micheál Martin wa sso quick to offer his suppor for an FG minority based on the two parties’ a common policy orientation,
The loss of support for SF & FF could actually mean that LAB picks up a seat or three compared to last weekend’s poll. E.g. in DSE, it now looks like Andrews is definitely gone, which gives Humphreys the 4th seat (2FG 2LAB). In some Northside constituencies, you have the same thing happening with SF going out and giving the last seat to LAB.
@Keith That is precisely why I think that FG will be ramping up attacks on Labour over the next 2 weeks. If Labour currently benefit from a fall for FF and/or SF, FG will feel a need to double their efforts.
Pre-election Red C polls suggested that support for both FG and Labour was ‘soft’, with potential to drift away or harden up once the election proper began. It appears this is happening, and not to Labour’s benefit. This latest Red C poll also shows 17% of voters still undecided, down from 20% last week. But if the trend is in FG’s direction and that party looks like it might be in a position to form a government without Labour more of the ‘undecideds’ are likely to flock to them than to Labour, whose support is on a downward curve, since human nature makes us all want to back winners. What complicates the picture for both FG and Labour in Dublin is the number of strong Independents that will be on the ticket in constituencies where the parties might have confidently envisaged they had a good chance of picking up a second seat only a few weeks ago.
I think lots of the analysis of opinion polls is weakened by the media’s assumption that events that coincide with the polling time frame have an immediate effect people’s voting intentions. A lot of voters may not even be aware of day to day election dramas on the day they occur because they’re too busy getting on with their own lives. It may take a few days or even weeks before things like performances in TV debates or specific policy announcements or individual politicians’ poor performances in the media begin to impact on voters’ preferences.
It’s now getting towards the endgame! Despite the Martin bounce ultimatley his task it proving to be hopeless. The polls show the public abandoning FF and its a matter of where the votes go. As for Dublin the vagaries of STV PR will really come into to play. FG’s vote is holding up and increasing. Lab is suffering from a pincer movement from the middle classes drifting to FG (and coming around to the idea of Taoiseach Enda) and SF/ULA fighting it from the left. As FF collapses to only a couple of seats, FF transfers may determine who gets the last seat (or if they end up being largely non-transferrable or scatter) which will give FG (or Lab if they reverse their downward trend) a huge seat bonus in the capital. Lab and the left are now clearly worried about FG heading for an overall majority and the intervention of the beards in the unions could even work in its favour. Only question is whether FG has peaked too soon but they have now got the momentum. I never voted for FG but there is a first time for everything!
Ross,
FG tails are up all right! Listening to Varadkar on radio this morning and Fergus O’Dowd on PK Show later on, they exude confidence. The sort of confidence that tends to prove infectiously attractive to undecided voters. Still, they have ten days or so left to make a gaffe that might knock them back a bit. I don’t think that will happen and with every day their momentum builds it would have less of an effect anyway. Couldn’t agree with you more about Jack O’Connor’s intervention: he’s cost an already fairly rattled Labour campaign a shedload of votes by reminding voters, especially middle class voters, of the unions’ ties to the Labour Party. As someone put it, a bit like Mc Dowell’s 2002 ‘up the pole’ anti-single government stunt, but in reverse.
Cian, it’s Labour not FG that are ramping up the attacks as the campaign gets close to entering the last week. You’d really have to wonder at what is going through minds of those Labour HQ that they are panicking while on twice the support they got 4 years ago. At this rate they will throw away 2nd place entirely, their natural competition is the FF working class base and the SF voice of protest and instead they’re focused on winning voters back from FG. If Labour are to win seats in places like Kerry South, Galway East, Mayo or even 2nd seats in Dublin North, South, Dun Laoghaire or Dublin North West it would be on the basis of transfers from eliminated FG candidates.
Just an aside but I’m rather surprised that the debate review panel is 4 Labour/left inclined to 1 partyless right of centrist but that’s up to yourselves.
Dan,
The Labour vote may not even be as solid as the opinion polls suggest. Labour’s trajectory is downwards in the last couple of national polls. Before the local/euro elections an IT/MRBI poll had Labour at 23%. A couple of days later the SBP/Red C put them at 18%. In the actual election the party nationally took 14.7% of first preferences.
So you can see why their strategists might be worried? If the current slide in the poll ratings is maintained, this would indicate that their first preferences may slip back to the mid teens in the actual election. The campaign strategy is predicated on Labour securing about 30% of the first preference vote in Dublin and averaging out to about 23% nationally – the highest ever attained by the party since 1922. FG is currently neck and neck with them in polls in Dublin, which they certainly did not anticipate, and has overtaken them by a mile in the rest of the country. There may not be all that many FG ‘eliminated’ candidates to act as ‘sweepers’ for Labour candidates, as their strategists might have assumed before the campaign began.
Labour will have a very good day out on Feb 25th by comparison with their 2002 and 2007 experiences, but nowhere near the great ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ breakthrough they anticipated. The ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ strategy lies in tatters. They didn’t do their homework either – as FG has done – in policy areas. That’s coming through very clearly in media performances, both of a leader who can only bluster about FG’s 5bn ‘black hole’ eight times in one RTE interview (as if that’s going to impress anyone) as well as mediocre performances by their spokespersons in just about every other area. Attacking their opposite numbers in FG on their policies or claiming ‘there isn’t much difference’ between Labour and FG positions doesn’t really cut it with an electroate who want clear answers about what the next government is going to do before they vote them in.
There also appears to be some sort of internal struggle going on about who’s running Labour’s Finance brief – Rabbitte and Quinn appearing on debates to confront Noonan with little or no sign of their official spokesperson, Joan Burton, who seems to have been teleported by the party handlers to some alternate political universe for the duration of the campaign. Labour’s strategy for saving the Irish economy also lacks coherence and consistency. It has already changed in fundamental aspects (48% tax rate gone; repudiation of IMF/EU deal) in the course of the campaign. Small wonder there’s lashing out going on in all directions; with a lot of it aimed at your party.
Incidentally, I think there are ‘black holes’ in ALL the parties’ economic projections, since it’s well nigh impossible to predict economic growth with any reasonable degree of certainty, especially at the present time. It’s more a triumph of hope over realistic expectation that we’re witnessing in all the manifestoes.
Labour does depend on a substantial middle-class vote, even if theoretically that shouldn’t be the case. And the middle class can do their arithmetic as well as anyone else: Labour’s 50/50 tax/cuts policy is, I reckon, scaring the bejaysus out of them.
Fine Gael are offering a classical Neo-Liberal take on the Economy. The nearer we get to the election the more people will see they are F.F in another guise.
Yes! It does indeed look like the aim is to have a Fine Gael minority government supported by Fianna Fail and the media. We seem to be going from the frying-pan into the fire.