Perceptions and polls

Before we had opinion polls it was the job of the paid commentariat of political correspondents and columnists to sum up how the nation felt about politics.  Famously, before the 1977 general election, the consensus was that the Cosgrave led coalition of Fine Gael and Labour would be re-elected.  Instead Fianna Fáil won a landslide victory never likely to be repeated.  Now that we have polls we have some more reliable information to try to gauge the mood of the electorate and predict what will happen come the election.  But perception is everything as Stephen Collins rightly points out this morning in his analysis of the latest Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll.

The most significant finding of the poll shows that 57 per cent of voters believe that Fianna Fáil and the PDs will form the next government, while only 17 per cent believe that Fine Gael and Labour (along with the Greens) will prevail.  Collins believes that "if this view becomes unshakable in the minds of the voters, it could finish the election as a contest between competing coalitions long before it ever begins".  If FF maintains near enough current levels of support the perception will be that they will be impossible to dislodge from power.  In 2002 the perceived collapse of support for Fine Gael as a result of its lack of credibility and floundering ineptitude meant that the real question in the minds of voters was who was going to partner FF in government.

Today's poll shows a major gap between expectations and preferences.  The combined party vote for the Rainbow coalition is 42 per cent.  This is only a point behind the FF-PD coalition.  When the sample of voters were asked which coalition they would prefer, 42 per cent would opt for the current government while the Rainbow scores 31 per cent (13 per cent would choose something else and 14 per cent had no opinion).  By stark contrast, when asked which coalition was likely to form the next government, 57 per cent predicted the return of the governing coalition as against a paltry 17 per cent predicting a Fine Gael-led alternative.  The key question to pose is why this gap is so wide?

Some explanation of the polling figures is attempted by Damian Loscher, managing director of TNS mrbi.  This "analysis", speculative and lacking in rigour, adds little or nothing.  This is annoying in that, for someone who has a shed load of data to use, there is little that goes beyond the banal.  For instance, we are are told that "it appears that the focus of our collective consciousness has moved from political corruption to management of the economy" and that "politically, we may be looking to play safe".  The one solid nugget of information he gives us is about Labour's vote:

At 11 per cent of first preference votes,   Labour support is unchanged. In the June 1992 Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll,   conducted prior to the general election, Labour was shown to enjoy the same   level of support as they do today. Probably not a particularly interesting  finding in itself, unless we look at how the Labour vote was distributed   across the population. In June 1992, Labour's appeal peaked amongst 25 to   34-year-old voters. Today, voters in the 25-34 age cohort are less likely than   the average voter to give Labour their first preference vote. Why Labour is not connecting with this critically important demographic group should give the party food for thought.

He limply concludes that "young people are under pressure to cope with the burden of success" and that "they are less likely to vote but may be more open to persuasion".  That'll make 'em sit up in Ely Place!  Stephen Collins derives another key fact from the figures: "Fianna Fáil's great strength is that its support is relatively evenly spread across regions, social classes, age groups and gender. However, there are some disparities. Party support in Dublin is 10 per cent and more below what it achieves in the rest of the country, while it is disproportionately higher among older voters and the lower socio-economic groups". 

So Dublin may be a forthcoming electoral battleground among the younger age cohorts.  The smaller parties ought to be in a position to offer a bit of innovation and experimentation to capture some of this.  They have little to lose if these figures are accurate and a drip-feed of similar polls before the campaign kicks off will severely dent morale and make the return of Fianna Fáil a near certainty.