The voters are withholding endorsement from both the present coalition and the potential "Rainbow" alternative, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent.
At this point it appears that two combinations of parties will be offered to voters as possible governments at the next general election. Were the results of this poll to be repeated in that election, neither would come close to being able to form the next government.
The current Government has 88 seats, five more than the minimum required for a Dáil majority. Were Fianna Fáil to win the 35 per cent it has in this poll in the next election, compared to the 41.5 per cent it secured in the last general election, its seat losses would be in double figures.
The PDs, on 3 per cent, would also be hard pressed to retain their eight seats, although local factors will count for them more than national performance. There is no doubt that on these figures, the current Coalition would be ejected from office.
But the poll provides a reality check for Fine Gael and the Labour Party too. Fine Gael's recovery in June from the dreadful 2002 general election result led to suggestions it was on an inexorable upward march back to success and power. But this week's 24 per cent figure remains unchanged since June.
In a general election Fine Gael would win back a significant number of the seats lost in 2002 when it secured just 22 per cent of the vote. However, it has considerably more ground to make up to get to the 28 per cent on which it won 54 seats in 1997.
Labour's vote has been heading in the wrong direction for several polls and on this 13 per cent showing it would make few gains. There is no doubt that on these figures, Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party together would not come close to winning the 25 seats they need to win a majority.
Both blocs, therefore, have a lot of work to do to persuade voters to give them the mandates they seek. The 12 per cent which intends to vote for Sinn Féin and the 10 per cent which intends to vote for small parties and Independents means close to one in four voters intend to vote for neither combination.
However, Fianna Fáil can also take encouragement from the poll. Most important are the substantial increases both in satisfaction with the Government and with the performance of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. Both are at their highest levels since they plummeted after the 2002 election when many voters felt they had been conned.
Now there are signs too that support for Fianna Fáil, as well as the Government and Taoiseach, is creeping up. It languished at 30-33 per cent for a year up to last February but is now at 35 per cent. The party remains a long way below the 41.5 per cent it achieved in the 2002 general election. However, the party support figures, and the increased satisfaction with the Government and Taoiseach suggest that the attempt to recast the Government's image, with the recent reshuffle, has had a positive effect.
Fine Gael can take some encouragement too. Its party support figure is static at 24 per cent, which is higher than the 20-22 per cent range achieved post-2002. More importantly, Enda Kenny is at last a party leader about whom voters have something positive to say. For most of his two years in the job, large swathes of voters have had no view of him at all, and those who had were evenly divided between those who approved and disapproved of him.
Now he has 46 per cent satisfied with him and just 25 per cent dissatisfied, putting him up there with the main party leaders and at his highest rating since becoming leader.
Where the leader's rating goes, the party's rating often follows, and Fine Gael will expect that the new stature of Mr Kenny will translate into higher Fine Gael support in the future.
For Labour this is the fifth decline in a row. Party support and approval of the performance of Pat Rabbitte may have been affected because of the negative effect of their handling of the presidency issue; whether or not to run Mr Michael D. Higgins for the office. Mr Rabbitte's personal satisfaction rating is nevertheless up five percentage points and he remains marginally ahead of Mr Kenny. But the downward party support trend to 13 per cent, compared to a 22 per cent high in May 2003 after a successful party conference, will worry the party's strategists.
They will also be worried by the failure, so far, to revive Labour fortunes with the plan to coalesce with Fine Gael. Supporters of the coming together of a Fine Gael/Labour/Green Party alternative hope that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.
The poll shows no evidence so far of such a groundswell. Offered to voters as separate parties, Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party combined have a lead of three percentage points over the Fianna Fáil/PD combination. But offered to voters as an alternative government, they failed to attract any greater support than the current Fianna Fáil/PD combination.
Of course a substantial number of don't knows remain. Also, if an alternative government combination is on offer, those who vote for each of the component parties will be more inclined to give their lower preferences to the other parties in the combination, thus boosting each of the parties. But it appears that so far, the signal that a Fine Gael/Labour coalition - possibly including the Greens - may be on offer at the next election has not grabbed the imagination of voters.