Sinn Féin now twice as popular as Labour Party – Irish Times poll

» John Hedges

An Phoblacht Editor

Now the challenge for Sinn Féin is to turn those poll numbers into solid voting figures and active party members

THAT Irish Times front-page lead headline today about its new opinion poll comes on top of an incredibly successful weekend Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Kerry and the open acknowledgment by the Taoiseach that Gerry Adams is ‘the leader of the NO campaign’ against the EU Austerity Treaty.

The poll puts Sinn Féin support at more than twice its 2011 general election vote when it made the breakthrough in having 14 TDs elected.

While opinion polls are good, they are a snapshot of public opinion at a particular time. Now the challenge for Sinn Féin is to turn those poll numbers into solid voting figures, active party members and campaigners – and readers of An Phoblacht.

The Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll asked people between last Wednesday and Friday who would they vote for if there was a general election tomorrow.

The figures for party support – when undecided voters are excluded – compared with the last Irish Times poll were: Fine Gael, 32% (down one point); Labour, 10% (down three); Fianna Fáil, 17% (up three); Sinn Féin, 24% (up three); Green Party, 2% (no change); and Others 15% (down two).

The Ipsos MRBI poll also shows that Gerry Adams is now the most popular party leader, with an eight-point jump in his ratings to catapult him one point ahead of Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny.

Even habitually hostile Irish Times Political Editor Stephen Collins had to concede:

“The most dramatic change since the last poll is the continuing rise of Sinn Féin, which has reached a new high.”

While Fine Gael is still the biggest party, its coalition partner, Labour, is not faring so well. The survey shows that Sinn Féin is now ahead of Labour in all parts of the state.

In an analysis piece under the headline ‘Sinn Féin surges as leader of anti-treaty forces’, the Managing Director of Ipsos MRBI, Damian Loscher, says the poll “confirms the rise of Sinn Féin in advance of the European fiscal treaty poll on Thursday”.

The Editorial writer in today’s Times (undoubtedly through gritted teeth if they wrote the Saturday 12 May Editorial on Sinn Féin) opines:

“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.”

This “historic high in modern times”, the Editorial writer notes, “reaffirms in no uncertain terms its second-party status in the South, albeit leaning very much on its expanding working-class base”.

And the news is not good for Labour in particular, reflecting why it launched a panic attack on Sinn Féin at the weekend and abandoned its centenary commemoration in Tipperary on Sunday “for security reasons” (i.e. public protests).

The Irish Times Editorial reports:

“Labour has seen a further three-point decline in just five weeks, down to 10% 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.”

The Editorial ends by noting that the next general election is probably three years away “and what fickle voters say now they may just as easily yet abandon”.

There is nothing fickle about the genuine distress families face with job insecurity and unemployment, debts, negative equity and emigration, and there's nothing fickle about the legacy this will leave in people's lives for many years to come. If Fine Gael and Labour continue with the policies of Fianna Fáil, then people will be seeking an alternative, one that growing numbers are already turning to – Sinn Féin.

'Labour in crisis as Sinn Féin leaps ahead' – Evening Herald