The Nice Treaty will have to be addressed, no matter who wins on Friday. And the "don't knows" will prove crucial, writes Richard Sinnott
It may seem the height of masochism or serious electoral addiction to turn to the next electoral contest just as the current one is drawing to a close.
There are, however, good reasons for turning attention to the referendum on the Nice Treaty that, barring some unforeseen political upheaval, is just around the corner.
The reasons are that the issue at stake is vital, that what we know about the attitudes and behaviour of the electorate in the first Nice referendum (June 2001) is worrying, and, finally, that something may be learned about the attitudes of the electorate on this important issue by looking at polling evidence taken at the height of a political campaign in which, in principle, all major issues facing the country ought to be thrashed out and clarified.
The importance of the issues involved in the proposal to ratify the Nice Treaty have been adequately rehearsed elsewhere.
The grounds for being concerned about the attitudes and behaviour of the electorate in the June 2001 referendum are that that referendum saw an unprecedentedly low turnout that, as the evidence indicates, was caused mainly by uncertainty and confusion regarding the issues.
A referendum in which the No vote declined as a proportion of the electorate (from 21 per cent in the Amsterdam referendum to 18 per cent in the Nice referendum), while still managing to clock up a 54 per cent majority of those who voted, does not represent an optimal popular decision-making process.
The relevant evidence as it emerges from the second Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll of the present campaign throws light on two aspects of the matter - on the underlying attitudes of the Irish electorate towards integration and on their voting intentions in a referendum on the Nice Treaty.
The measure of underlying attitudes presents two polar opposites: "Ireland should do all it can to unite fully with the EU" and "Ireland should do all it can to protects its independence from the EU". It then seeks to ascertain which of these is closest to the views of the respondent.
It defines a spectrum and seeks to locate respondents as leaning towards one or other side of this spectrum.
This question has now been asked seven times since 1996. The accumulated evidence indicates a number of trends.
Firstly, it indicates that the normal balance of opinion on integration versus independence is about one-half on the side of pursuing integration, a little over one-third on the side of maintaining independence and one sixth or thereabouts unwilling or unable to form a view.
However, the accompanying graph also shows that, in and around EU-referendum time, pro-integration sentiment falls, anti-integration sentiment rises and that referendums on the matter seem to leave the public (temporarily) more confused.
This evidence provides some encouragement to the pro-Nice side. However, it also warns that they need to improve either their campaign strategy or its implementation, or both, if they are to succeed in stemming the loss of their potential supporters to the No side or to the ranks of the don't knows and abstainers.
The evidence points to some of the key targets of any renewed pro-Nice campaign. Pro-integration sentiment is substantially weaker outside Dublin, among the manual occupations, and among farmers.
The evidence on voting intentions in a hypothetical Nice Treaty referendum underlines the campaigning imperatives and especially the need to counter the tendency of voters (and of female voters in particular) to retreat to the sidelines on this issue. In terms of voting intention, opinion is equally divided three ways - one-third Yes, one-third No and one-third Don't Know.
Victory in the next Nice referendum will go to whichever side manages to mobilise the last category.
It is regrettable that none of the parties in the election campaign succeeded in pushing the Nice issue to centre stage. Elections are periods of intense political involvement for substantial sections of the population.
They are also periods of at least marginal political involvement for the segment of population that normally pays little or no attention to politics.
Nice deserved to appear on the radar of both these groups.
The other aspect of the missed opportunity of this campaign is that raising the issue of Nice in the context of a general election campaign would have made it possible to demonstrate the connections between European integration issues and the range of domestic political problems on which the EU has an impact.
The fact that opportunities of this kind have not been taken up means that the parties and their leaders are going to have to engage in an even greater effort to mobilise voters come the autumn.
• Prof Richard Sinnott is Director of the Public Opinion and Political Behaviour research programme at the Institute for the Study of Social Change in UCD