Crunching the Numbers

Frank Flannery, the national Director of Elections for Fine Gael, is an experienced and shrewd analyst of electoral politics and, according to the Irish Times this morning, his calculations show Fine Gael and Labour coming well shy of a majority.  In what is described as an internal Fine Gael analysis has predicted the party will gain at least 19 seats, but its electoral partner Labour will increase its seats by five at most in the next general election.  It confirms the views of some of us as noted in my previous post. 

Flannery's analysis, based on private and public opinion polls, candidate feedback and other data, shows that if the party took 26 per cent of the vote, it would take 51 seats in a general election.  His analysis of each constituency, given to the party leadership two weeks ago, claimed that if the party increased its vote share further to 28 per cent, it would add an additional 26 seats to its current total of 32 seats.  He expects Fine Gael to do rather better than its current 22 per cent in the most recent poll.  He's probably correct in that it's usually the case that FG support is a little understated in polls compared to the actual results.  Flannery also expects Fianna Fáil's vote to rise a little above its current level but "would still lose at least 11 seats if it fails to increase its vote beyond 38 per cent."

Most damning of all, at least from my point of view, is that he gives Labour between two and five additional seats.  And from even a cursory glance around the constituencies it's hard to disagree.  So as things stand, without the opposition developing sufficient message and momentum to give them a real lift, it will be very difficult to dislodge Fianna Fáil from government.  So we're looking at Fianna Fáil and Labour or a four party "Rainbow Plus" alignment, assuming that the PDs can crawl back to the next Dáil with at least half their current number of seats.