Fine Gael know they are in real trouble

The suggestion from Michael Noonan and Enda Kenny this week that the next general election will be a choice for voters between a Fine Gael-led government and a Sinn Féin-led government is not accidental. All of this election and post-election talk is part of a Fine Gael strategy that aspires to move voters on from the water charges controversy and get middle class voters in particular to focus on economic progress on the one hand and the potential for political instability on the other.

It doesn’t seem to be working.

Fine Gael’s figures people know they are in real trouble. This has long been obvious to anyone looking at scenarios for the next election.

It was reiterated in the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll published in this newspaper this week. They know that Fine Gael's best chance of staying in government after the next election is with Fianna Fáil, and the best way to scare voters away from Independents or Fianna Fáil and towards Fine Gael is to raise the prospect of Sinn Féin in government.

Months ago the bookies installed a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil government at unbackable odds as the clear favourite for the make-up of the next government.

The only thing that comes close in the odds is the option of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil with the Labour Party and/or some Independents. The odds on that option have tightened in recent weeks as polls show further slippage in Fine Gael’s vote.

That analysis is informed by how the various parties and the Independents performed in the local and European elections, and how they have performed in opinion polling since.

The European elections are very much personality-driven, so the local elections are the most useful figures to consider first.

In the local elections last May Fianna Fáil got the biggest share of the vote on 25 per cent, just ahead of Fine Gael on 24 per cent. Labour got 7 per cent, and Sinn Féin got 15.2 per cent.

The largest bloc, however, was “Others”: the Independents and micro-parties, who got 26 per cent.

There have now been 13 published political opinion polls since the local and European elections in May: four by Millward Brown, five by Red C, two by Behaviour and Attitudes and two by the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI. Putting this six months of polling from different agencies together is the best way to compensate for differing polling methods, weightings or adjustment, isolate specific events and get the best possible picture of where the parties are right now.

Poll of polls

In this poll of polls which I have put together Fine Gael has averaged 24 per cent since the local elections, Sinn Féin 22 per cent and Fianna Fáil 19 per cent, while Labour has averaged at just over 7 per cent and Others are at 28 per cent.

Even allowing for margins of error, and the fact that we are probably 15 months from the next election, this suggests we are set for an unprecedented electoral earthquake when that election comes.

It is already clear that whereas since independence we have had a “two-party” or at times “a two-and-a-half party system” we now have a system comprising three parties (Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil) a quarter party (Labour) and a very large bloc of Independents and micro-parties. Some new political entities or collective bargaining configurations may also yet emerge from within the Others.

If these poll-of -poll figures were to be repeated in a general election Fine Gael would get 40-45 seats, Labour might get about five seats, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil 30-35 seats each, and there would be about 45 seats for the Independents or micro-parties.

Even if shrunken in the next Dáil Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are more likely to be co-ordinated enough to come together than their collective opponents.

Aversion

The type of voter Fine Gael is trying to retain or target has an aversion to Sinn Féin being in government. Fine Gael is hoping that aversion is strong enough to enable voters to overcome their current irritation with the Government, especially if there is an appreciable economic recovery.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael also know their vote could shrink below a point where even together they could not form a government. Any doubt Fine Gael may have had about that will have been displaced by yesterday's Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll. Kenny's Fine Gael is now in as precarious a position as Brian Cowen's Fianna Fáil was 15 months before the last general election.

Fifteen months is a long time in politics but for now all the momentum seems to be with the Independents.