INSIDE POLITICS:Campaign tactics and the ability to attract transfers will prove crucial to the outcome of a wide open presidential race, writes STEPHEN COLLINS
THE STRIKING thing about the presidential election is that it is so wide open. Given that most of the candidates are bunched so tightly together at the start of the formal campaign the only sure thing is that nobody will win on the first count.
In all likelihood it will take six counts before the winner emerges on October 28th and that means that the ability of candidates to attract preferences will be critical in determining which of them emerges as the next president of Ireland.
However, in order to benefit from transfers a candidate has to remain in the race. There is no point in being transfer-friendly if the first preference vote is too low as it doesn’t matter how many transfers an eliminated candidate obtains.
The key to success is to have enough first preferences to be near the top of the field on the first count and to win enough transfers to be ahead on the final count.
At this stage Michael D Higgins appears best placed to win the contest. Successive polls have put him in the top three and he is showing a strong ability to win transfers into the bargain. That means he doesn’t have to lead the field on the first count to win.
He has played his cards well so far delivering trademark declamatory speeches at will and dealing humorously with the potentially negative issue of his age. Higgins also handled the Norris bid to get a nomination from Dublin City Council with political adroitness, appearing magnanimous as he urged Labour councillors to allow his rival into the race.
The critical thing for the Labour candidate is to remain ahead of Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell as the counts proceed as he is sure of a reasonably solid transfer if and when his Coalition partner is eliminated. He will pick up transfers from other candidates as well but Mitchell’s transfers will be the key to winning.
For Mitchell the opposite is the case. He simply has to get ahead of Higgins to have any chance of being elected and if he can somehow manage that he would have a genuine chance of winning, despite recent polls showing him down the field.
Mitchell has travelled about 20,000km since he was nominated on July 9th but so far that has not translated into a great deal of public support. His low-key campaign has been obscured by the continuing controversy surrounding David Norris and by the entry of Martin McGuinness into the field.
Now that the campaign proper has begun he will have to up the tempo. Mitchell is the only one of the candidates who has had the courage to date to confront Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness about his IRA record and that may serve to rally the traditional Fine Gael vote as well as reminding the wider electorate about some home truths.
The Fine Gael TDs and councillors who nominated Mitchell will now have to put in the hard slog to get the vote out for him. After its sensational general election victory there was a lot of confidence in Fine Gael that the party could replace Fianna Fáil as the natural party of government. If Mitchell is reduced to fourth or fifth place in the presidential election it will be a salutary warning for the party that all the gains made in February, 2011, could just as easily be swept away. It could also dent the Government’s confidence on the eve of the budget.
Norris’s comeback has been the story of the campaign to date but unless he manages to defuse the controversy about the letters sent to the Israeli authorities pleading for clemency for his former partner the issue that prompted his departure from the election in July will not go away.
Norris has only made his problems worse by claiming that there are legal reasons for his refusal to publish the remaining letters as there are no obvious legal reasons for not publishing. He may be right in saying that the public has had enough of the issue but the media will not let him move on until he deals with it adequately.
Norris is clearly a popular figure with the Irish public, as successive polls have demonstrated, but if his campaign remains mired in the Nawi letters issue it could be fatal for his prospects. In order to win he will have to be in the lead on the first count as he is not doing all that well on second preferences.
Martin McGuinness has the same problem. He has generated a huge amount of publicity and looks set to do considerably better than the Sinn Féin vote but he is the most transfer repellent candidate of all and that means he can only win if he is well ahead on the first count.
His entry into the contest was widely regarded as a master stroke by Sinn Féin and while it will certainly pay short-term dividends the long-term consequences may not be as good for the party. By bringing in a candidate, however charismatic, who was so centrally involved with the IRA’s campaign, the party has reminded the voters in the Republic of its record of ruthless violence and intimidation.
That record has generally been ignored in recent years, in the interests of preserving the peace in the North, but the presidential election has focused attention on it in a way that Sinn Féin did not expect. In the longer term it is hard to see how that will do the party’s prospects in the Republic much good.
If McGuinness is transfer-repellent Mary Davis is the most transfer-friendly candidate in the race apart from Higgins. She could be the dark horse but in order to make a real challenge she will have to get among the leaders on first preferences and that has not happened to date.
The Davis campaign is slick and well funded and she certainly has an appeal for women voters. Now that all of the candidates are getting more equal access to the airwaves she will have an opportunity to expand her support base. If she does she will be in with a real chance of winning.
Seán Gallagher has been campaigning longest and has shown great guts and self-belief in getting enough backing from county councils to get a nomination. He is a capable performer and has much more to offer than his Dragons Den television appearance might indicate.
He would probably stand a good chance if he was the only Independent candidate in the field but now that three others have followed him along the council nomination route and Sinn Féin has entered the contest he has difficulty in standing out from the crowd.
Dana Rosemary Scallon does stand out because of her record both as a Eurovision winner and as an MEP with a strongly Eurosceptic bent who has campaigned against abortion. She polled a very respectable 14 per cent when she was a candidate in 1997 but it will be a big surprise if she comes close to that this time around.
Turnout will be a crucial factor in the result. Last time around it was 50 per cent and it will be a surprise if it is much higher this time. A low turnout should favour the political party candidates who can rely on an organisation to help get the vote out even if the public does not regard presidential elections in the same party political terms as general elections.