THESE EU referendums just keep on giving. Sinn Féin, it appears, has every reason to be grateful for the torturous EU treaty ratification process whose polarising debates have set the Irish political establishment – Fine Gael, Labour, and Fianna Fáil – again at odds with the national mood, remorselessly feeding the irresistible advance of Sinn Féin.
With an historic high in modern times of 24 per cent in today’s Irish Times/IpsosMRBI poll (now 2½ times its 2011 election vote) Sinn Féin reaffirms in no uncertain terms its second-party status in the South, albeit leaning very much on its expanding working class base. And it is now, as it comes out of a successful ardfheis, close to equalling its 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly vote (26.9 per cent) – a remarkable upending of the southern party’s poor-relation status vis-à-vis its northern comrades. Gerry Adams’ satisfaction rating, up eight points to 37 per cent, when compared to Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s one-point decline (to 36 per cent), makes him the highest-rated party leader in the country.
Kenny’s personal ratings slide (minus 3 per cent) only slightly exceeds his party’s marginal decline to 32 per cent, but the Fine Gael leader will take little comfort – the Government parties’ combined support (after undecideds are excluded) is now some 13 points below the 55 per cent which won them the election.
Labour has seen a further three-point decline in just five weeks, down to 10 per cent of the vote, almost half its general election showing. Nothing better illustrates its disappearing mandate more clearly than a comparison of its poll standing and current Dáil strength compared to the party that has since the election remorselessly eaten away at its base – Labour, 37 TDs, to Sinn Féin’s 14, while the latter has nearly 2½ times its support. Its base is now larger in every regional and social category, including ABs, than Labour’s.
Labour is relearning its repeated experience of coalition government. While Fine Gael’s members and supporters may also be hurt by austerity, they are more inclined to accept the arguments for cutbacks. Labour, which a poll as recently as June 2010 found for the first time to be the State’s most popular party, will always in government be fighting its base where the pain is felt most acutely and which is less ideologically accepting of the “we must put the country first” argument. Just 29 per cent of Labour supporters, to 67 per cent of Fine Gael’s, express satisfaction with the Government.
Fianna Fáil returns gently to its general election standing (17 per cent), the first real gain the party has made for some time, and some reassurance to leader Micheál Martin who gains seven points in his national satisfaction rating. Two-thirds of his party’s supporters express their confidence in him.
Volatility and the shifting of long-standing allegiances, the hallmark of politics in the State for the last two years, remain, however, the central feature of the political landscape described by this poll. The next general election is probably three years away, and what fickle voters say now they may just as easily yet abandon.