Polling – Page 4 – Slugger O'Toole

Ipsos/MRBI: FF maintain a short lead whilst SF rejoin Ireland’s political peloton…

Mick Fealty on June 14, 2013, 2:13 pm | Readers 14

So, the latest Ipsos/MRBI poll is out in the Irish Times. At this mid point in the term of the thirty first Dail, there’s not a lot of change to highlight. Fianna Fail at just two points ahead of Fine Gael is within the margin of error, but means steady as she goes. The party will want to widen that gap before next year’s local elections, not least because Sinn Fein’s bump back up to 21% suggest they are also …

IPSOS/MORI poll on Good Friday Agreement: Scepticism on Stormont’s ‘progress’ on sectarianism

Mick Fealty on May 23, 2013, 2:20 pm | Readers 82

Some interesting polling figures on Nolan last night regarding the long term effects of the Good Friday Agreement. Stand out difference is that whilst 78% of nationalists would still vote Yes, 41% of unionists would. There’s no way of really measuring that against the original poll, but Wesley Johnston estimates that 60% unionists voted Yes whilst Nationalists came in at 94% (which I think is a tad optimistic). But the proportions of those who would vote NO is also down, …

Millward Brown poll puts Fianna Fail comfortably up on its #LG09 figure

Mick Fealty on March 18, 2013, 7:20 am | Readers 51

So, via Cedar Lounge, here’s the latest from Millward Brown poll for the Sindo… Labour 9% -2% Fine Gael 25% +1% Fianna Fail 29% +6% Sinn Fein 20% -1% Others 17% -5% Don’t know -32% Millward Brown have polled less regularly and less frequently than other companies. To some extent this poll merely confirms Fianna Fail’s recent rise in rival polls at the direct expense of Fine Gael. But it is also the most convincing sign that its ‘domestic vote’ …

Millward Brown Poll: Scary buns for Fine Gael?

Mick Fealty on February 16, 2013, 9:32 pm | Readers 117

No polls for a while then three or four come along at once. News broke tonight of the Sunday Independent’s Millward Brown poll.. MB have done a few polls on politics for the Sindo, but the last comparative poll that I have figures for was last May… These figures are proportions of voters after eliminating the undecided, which stands at a high figure 27% ; Fianna Fáil 27% (17), Fine Gael 25% (36) Sinn Féin 20% (20) Labour 13% (12) …

Fine Gael drop back towards Ireland’s large political peloton

Mick Fealty on February 11, 2013, 9:01 pm | Readers 53

Let’s get one thing straight, polls do not increase or decrease the size of a political party. They are nere snapshots of opinion, not predictors of the future. So whilst Sinn Fein was never the second largest party in the state, neither is Fianna Fail currently the largest. Of course both, if trends continue, are set to make gains in the next big elections, which are the Locals and Europeans. But all we can say at the moment is that the …

Spotlight Poll: A ‘crisis’ of widespread political mislabelling?

Mick Fealty on February 6, 2013, 5:06 pm | Readers 134

It says something about how little parties in Northern Ireland spend talking to their voters that last night’s findings (full data here) seem to have knocked all of the parties back on their heels last night. It was a bit like an old fashioned Dimbleby election night show only one where every single party had to spin some form of bad news as good. There were two facts that demonstrate that what we’ve been witnessing since early December is non …

Polls: Is Sinn Fein becoming a first stop for government disaffection?

Mick Fealty on January 27, 2013, 10:50 am | Readers 49

It’s rare you get two polls out in Ireland on the same weekend. Since they both suggest slightly different dramas the net effect seems to have been each to cancel the other out. Let’s take the Sunday Times poll first, from Stephen O’Brien on Twitter, who’ve gone with the FF FG neck and neck narrative: Sunday Times/B&A pollFG 26 -4 FF 24 +2Lab 11 -1SF 19 +5Ind 18 -1Green 3 nc — Stephen O’Brien (@sob999) January 26, 2013 Gav Reilly …

Red C Poll: Government parties ‘stabilise’ with Fianna Fail steady as she goes…

Mick Fealty on January 10, 2013, 8:28 pm | Readers 50

Here goes with the rest of that Paddy Power/Red C poll… Much of the reasoning of holding it or at least announcing it now is the legislating for the abortion issue. And there’s some interesting detail on that, but first the figures for the parties… Fine Gael 29 per cent Labour 13 per cent. Fianna Fáil 21 per cent Sinn Féin 16 per cent. Independents, the Green Party and others 21 per cent. It hasn’t shifted much from Behaviours and …

[Corrected] over half of southerners think restriction of Union flag in Belfast was wrong…

Mick Fealty on January 10, 2013, 5:36 pm | Readers 88

Well, southerners may not have been impressed with the shenanigans of Loyalist protesters, but it is clear they’re not impressed with the move to take the ‘flag from the pole’ either. Here’s the latest Red C findings: Over half of those surveyed, 57pc, felt Belfast city council was wrong to restrict the flying of the Union flag at Belfast city hall. Update: From the official report, courtesy of JR below: Over half of those that expressed an opinion (57%) suggest …

Red C Poll: The trend lines between FG and FF softly narrowing…

Mick Fealty on December 3, 2012, 12:33 pm | Readers 56

The most interesting aspect of yesterday’s Red C poll, was the 80 plus per cent in favour of legislating on the circumstances in which an abortion might be legally reformed in the Republic. That would put some pure green (not to mention socially liberal) water between the north and the south on the matter. Only 10% said No, and a mere 5% Don’t Know. But on the political front, there’s been some interesting shifts in government ratings, with Fine Gael …

BelTel Poll: UUP disappearing in the east of Northern Ireland?

Mick Fealty on November 30, 2012, 11:38 am | Readers 123

So, here’s today’s poll in the BelTel: DUP 30% SF 26.4 SDLP 13.5 Alliance 11.6 UUP 11.4 Alliance, without doing very much for it, are pounding the UUP east of Bann. As one leading commentator told Slugger this morning, this would cost the UUP key seats in Belfast and North Down. In fact, what’s happening underneath the figures are that the UUP are quickly becoming a border area party, with the DUP now holding majority shares in the broader pro …

Tory research uncovers a politically ‘orphaned’ Catholic middle class?

Mick Fealty on November 28, 2012, 8:03 am | Readers 89

Liam Clarke had an analysis piece in the BelTel yesterday (I still want to say last night) in which he cited some party polling by Lucid Talk for the Conservatives. [Nationalists, you may want to look away from the screen for a while, since this is what the Tories consider their best battleground territory]. It’s worth noting that this is both more and less than your average poll. Only the Tories could afford to put in the field a survey …

Going into conference, direction of travel of the UUP and the SDLP is not great…

Mick Fealty on September 21, 2012, 6:54 pm | Readers 55

Our own Gerry Lynch has details of today’s poll in the BelTel: Poll doing the rounds by “The Political Firm”, sample 578, NI Assembly 1st pref: DUP 34%, SF 27%, All 13%, UUP 10%, SDLP 9%, TUV 3%, Grn 2%. — Gerry Lynch (@gerrylynch) September 20, 2012 Needless to say, after a torid summer in which they were Billy No Mates in the media [same as it ever was – Ed], the DUP is very pleased today. And well they …

How a spot of economic revisionism may yet save George Osborne (and friend David)…

Mick Fealty on July 23, 2012, 4:08 pm | Readers 44

Interesting take on what on the face of it look like some disastrous polling for the current Chancellor of the Exchequer from YouGov Supremo Peter Kellner. It’s predicated on the tendency of forecasters to be overly pessimistic about actual performance of the UK economy: The revisions of the 2009/2010 figures came well after the last general election. They were far too late to help Labour. This time, any revision is likely to come well before the next election, in good …

Has polling itself caused the shift in Scottish sentiment towards independence?

Mick Fealty on July 10, 2012, 10:38 am | Readers 39

I think this is a classic case of how measuring something causes it to change… SCOTTISH voters are turning strongly against independence, according to the latest opinion poll, which shows the cross-party No camp charging ahead with a record 20-point lead. The snapshot by TNS BMRB – taken after both campaign launches – puts those against independence on 50% and those in favour on 30%; the latter figure being the lowest received for independence in five years of surveys by …

Red C: Sinn Fein lose steam in the wake of the Referendum…

Mick Fealty on June 25, 2012, 9:35 am | Readers 56

One thing you don’t hear said too often about the political situation in the Republic and that is just how overall, how remarkably stable it seems to have become. Well, at least for the Independents, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. There is some volatility in Sinn Fein’s support and a lot of speculation about how hard the Labour vote actually is. The latest poll is from Red C in the Sunday Business Post: Fine Gael 32% (30) Labour 15% (15) …

BelTel Poll: Women for Alliance and SDLP. Men for Sinn Fein. Unionists achieve balance.

Mick Fealty on June 13, 2012, 12:18 pm | Readers 61

There’s other more fascinating material still coming out of the BelTel poll. Liam has some very interesting material on gender balance amongst the support for parties. Despite having the nearest to a balanced ticket and impressively promoted women to near the top, women are less likely to vote for Sinn Fein: Sinn Fein, eight of whose 29 MLAs are female, has a particular imbalance between male and female voters — 32% of those who intend to vote are men but …

BelTel Poll: Momentum is with the Alliance party and the Greens (everyone else as you were)

Mick Fealty on June 13, 2012, 10:47 am | Readers 54

Bel Tel figures from the LucidTalk poll are well worth extracting from Liam Clarke’s article (finally coming online this morning from yesterday). The first thing to note is the absence of any significant deviation from the election results, which in my experience of NI polls is first. Mind you, this is a more than respectable sample and not the 500 or 600 polls we have had before which suffer from massive distortional error rates. In truth though, there’s not much …

Joining the police is still not something many people want to talk about…

Mick Fealty on June 12, 2012, 1:35 pm | Readers 566

Now this is interesting. Though I am not quite sure what it means in reality. Joining the cops is not popular anywhere. Even in relatively quiet areas of England, policemen tend to live slightly separate lives from the rest of us. They see layers of behaviour that the rest of remain apart from or deeply unaware of. In a place like Northern Ireland where to join the police can still make you ‘a legitimate political target’, it is hardly surprising …

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

Mick Fealty on May 28, 2012, 10:06 am | Readers 67

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 …