Pat Rabbitte has taken the "favourite" tag from Brendan Howlin in the Labour leadership contest, reports Mark Brennock, Political Correspondent.
Party activists - as opposed to party leaderships - are notoriously prone to ignoring perceived public opinion and doing their own thing when given a real choice. And those who seek to follow public opinion often suffer severe consequences. Fine Gael bowed to perceived public opinion in first replacing Mr Alan Dukes with Mr John Bruton, and then replacing Mr John Bruton with Mr Michael Noonan. Both decisions showed the folly of trying to chase fickle public moods.
Labour TDs and Senators report that their members are flushed with the excitement of being handed the power to choose their own leader. They will take it very seriously, they say, and will not necessarily be stampeded by an opinion poll.
But that caveat aside, the poll provides a major boost for Mr Pat Rabbitte's campaign to win the Labour Party leadership. It means that he, and not Mr Brendan Howlin, is now the early favourite and the man to beat.
Labour members know that when they fill in and return their ballot papers before October 25th they are not just choosing someone with whom they will be ideologically comfortable: They are choosing a face to put on their next election poster and a voice to represent them to voters. Last Monday and Tuesday, the public and Labour voters said they would prefer the face and voice of Mr Rabbitte.
The poll findings further challenge the early theory that Labour would not elect someone who had come to the party from Democratic Left. Mr Rabbitte's clear lead among the general public and among Labour voters establishes him as a very serious contender among the 3,600 party members making the choice.
There will be disappointment but some relief within the Howlin camp.
The disappointment will obviously arise from the fact that the deputy leader is behind among the public and party voters. But the relief arises from the fact that he remains within striking distance.
Some of his supporters had feared that Mr Howlin might suffer among Labour voters because he was seen as an establishment figure, a senior former minister without a radical edge to his image. They were also concerned that his decision to confront rumours about his private life by stating that he was not gay might have done him harm.
If these factors have lost him some support, they have not lost him enough to put him out of the race. He remains in the public mind the second main contender. If he remains ahead of Mr Eamonn Gilmore and Ms RóisíShortall among party members, he could still hope to catch Mr Rabbitte.
For Mr Gilmore the result is very disappointing. Most party activists believe his position among those who will make the choice next month is higher than that shown in this poll. Supporters of both Mr Howlin and Mr Gilmore have said privately over the last fortnight that they sense that their voters will tend to transfer to each other's candidate more than to Mr Rabbitte.
Therefore, they argued, even if Mr Rabbitte is ahead on the first count, whichever of them comes second stands a good chance of winning. However if this poll result influences the party members, it will be very difficult for Mr Gilmore to hope to get ahead of Mr Howlin.
Indeed Ms Shortall's performance in coming ahead of Mr Gilmore will surprise party activists. She receives her highest ratings among women (14 per cent) and Green Party supporters (19 per cent).