The Disadvantages of Incumbency

Today's poll in the Sunday Business Post is bad news for the ruling party.  Fianna Fáil has dropped another 2 points and its three month average figure in the Red C tracking polls is now at 34 per cent.   This is not guaranteed to put them out of office but it makes it more likely.   The fact that both Labour and the PDs have gained a couple of points each is not statistically significant.  But the long term decline in support for the government certainly is quite significant, as is the corresponding lead for the Rainbow alternative.  How do we best account for this?

There is little evidence that people are genuinely enthused by the putative Rainbow.  Hardly surprising because we don't really know what such an administration would be like at a programmatic or policy level.  The greatest achievement of the Fine Gael and Labour leaders has been to force a certain clarity of choice in the minds of the electorate and the commentariat in terms of two rival blocks competing for office.  In 2002 nobody believed Fianna Fáil would be forced out of office because it was obvious that the Fine Gael campaign was doomed and that they were going to lose many seats.  This time they will make many gains. 

So what has changed?  The answer, I believe, is due to the fact of long term incumbency.  Fianna Fáil will have been in office for all but two-and-a-half years of the past twenty years come the time of the next election.  Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian about the Swedish Social Democrats losing the election last weekend, remarked that "the economy, stupid" is no longer enough to win:

The warning from Sweden is that when things feel so good, voters feel they can take a punt on a fresh new party. "Time for change" is always a potential winner: a natural democratic urge tugs voters towards throwing the bastards out after a while.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Irish economy is a more frail creature than most people perceive, the same is true here.  It is notable that the Red C polling sample was taken before the revelations about the financial assistance received by Bertie Ahern when he was Finance Minister in the early 1990s.  Such revelations just add to the tarnished image of a government that has been in power for far too long.  I suspect that this desire for change somewhat blunts the criticism that one might reasonably expect of the lack of specifics in terms of the policy of the opposition parties that will make up the alternative government.

Comments

[Bob]

This is misleading. Does not explain the subject.