WITH LESS than a week to polling day, Seán Gallagher has built up a substantial lead in the presidential election race and it will take a remarkable shift in public opinion in the final few days to deprive him of the prize. Michael D Higgins cannot be written off completely but he will have to make big inroads into Mr Gallagher's lead in the last few days of the campaign if he is to stand a chance of winning on transfers. It has become a two-horse race since the last Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll at the beginning of the month with Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness slipping out of contention.
The sustained focus on his IRA past appears to have put a ceiling on his potential appeal to the electorate. The collapse in support for David Norris, Gay Mitchell and Mary Davis has been a feature of the campaign while the controversy surrounding Dana Rosemary Scallon’s family issues has clearly damaged her prospects.
The big news from the poll is the continued surge in support for Mr Gallagher. He has doubled his level of support despite the media focus over the past week on his role in Fianna Fáil and, potentially more damaging, the controversy surrounding some of his business dealings. Mr Gallagher is now the favoured choice of Fianna Fáil voters and that has given him a solid base on which to build. More surprisingly, he is also in the lead among Fine Gael voters. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin is entitled to a quiet smile at the turn of events. He was widely castigated within his own party and outside it for the decision not to nominate a candidate for the presidency. Now an Independent candidate with very close links to the party is on the verge of becoming the ninth president of Ireland, something an official party candidate could not have hoped to do. It goes to show that the Fianna Fáil brand may not be nearly as toxic as some of the party’s opponents have assumed. With the right candidates and the right policies the party may still have an important contribution to make to the country’s political future. It will be fascinating to see how the Fianna Fáil candidate in the Dublin West byelection, David McGuinness, performs on Thursday.
For Mr Higgins the poll result will come as a disappointment. He wanted to run for the presidency seven years ago but was unable to do so because his party agreed to a second term for Mary McAleese. He has been planning his campaign for a very long time and has not actually put a foot wrong but has been caught in the Gallagher surge. Whether he can turn the tide is doubtful but it is not impossible. For Mr Mitchell the campaign has been an unmitigated disaster and it will give Fine Gael pause for thought. The assumption that it would take over the Fianna Fáil mantle as the dominant party for the next generation looks much more doubtful that it did a few months ago. Ultimately the lesson of the campaign is that many voters see the presidency in a very different light to party politics. There is a risk involved in electing a virtual unknown to the highest office in the land but the voters seem prepared to take it as an alternative to electing an experienced politician.