Into the last week of #GE16 and momentum is with Independents and Fianna Fail…

By the end of this week, the election will have run its full course. And yet it’s clear that the journalists are suffering that usual sense you get in Irish elections that they’re getting shut out of a conversation they aren’t privy to… Richard Downes takes you ‘behind the spin’ with this report tonight. #RTEPThttps://t.co/qeUnaAEqDW — RTÉ Prime Time (@RTE_PrimeTime) February 18, 2016   Another of these surprising constituency polls (-/+5%) came out in the week suggesting that Sinn Fein’s …

Read more…

Ipsos- MRBI Poll: Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leveling out…

Just a quick one, the Irish Times poll figures have some interesting if minor changes in the party fortunes in the south… …when undecided voters are excluded – compared with the last Irish Times poll was: Fine Gael, 25 per cent (down five points); Labour, 8 per cent (down one point); Fianna Fáil, 25 per cent (up three points); Sinn Féin, 21 per cent (no change); and Independents/Others, 21 per cent (up three points). The core vote for the parties compared with the …

Read more…

Sinn Fein buying up capital at the bottom of the Irish political market…

So once again, Sinn Fein is sitting pretty in the polls. The Irish Times poll puts them on an unprecedented high, of 24%. Labour are down to 10%, which is roughly their lowest margin in the period between 2002 and the onset of the recession in the summer of 2008. The hard core of the Labour vote remains with them, but the protest vote (which contains a sizeable chunk of former Fianna Fail voters) they gained in the last general …

Read more…

Enda caught in the middle between Eamon and Brian…

Despite the poor showing in the polls, Fianna Fail have one secret, get-out-of-jail-free card they can play against both Labour (soaring ahead at 33% in the latest Ipso-MRBI poll) and Fine Gael (now level pegging at 24% with Fianna Fail). They’ve been in government for so long, they have acquired the knack of being plausible. Very much an underestimated quality in Irish politics. A normally talented performer in Dail, even Joan Burton was tempted to jump the shark with her …

Read more…