ATTENTION has been concentrated recently on the battle between the Rainbow Coalition and the putative Fianna Fail/PDs as the gap between these alternatives has fluctuated from poll to poll.
Up to the time of writing, the figures which have attracted virtually no attention are those for Independents and for microparties not attached to either alternative team, e.g. the Green Party, the Workers' Party and Sinn Fein.
But the most striking feature of this election has been the size of the poll figures for candidates supporting neither of the alternative coalitions.
Up to March this poll support for "noncoalition" candidates, at 6 to 7 per cent, was not out of line with the pattern in 1992.
But within the last four weeks this figure has jumped in the May 3rd-5th MRBI poll to 9.5 per cent and in its May 19th-29th poll to 11.5 per cent. And in the latest IMS poll it has jumped again to 16 per cent.
Moreover, experience suggests that public opinion polls consistently underestimate the proportion of the electorate which votes for Independent candidates. Indeed, this is the only element of polls that has proved unreliable and for a simple reason.
People who vote Independent arc voting, by definition, for individual named candidates. And national polls clearly cannot present to those surveyed the names of the 100 odd individuals who stand as Independents.
And without these names before them, many interviewees understandably fail to mention to the pollsters their intention to vote for particular Independents.
For example, in 1992 the IMS polls (which did not then identify Sinn Fein as a party but lumped its candidates in with Independents) showed an average of 3.8 per cent support for Sinn Fein plus Independents.
But the first preference vote in the general election for such candidates was 8.4 per cent. For its part, MRBI in its two preelection polls in 1992 showed 2.5 per cent support for Independents, and the Independent vote cast was 6.5 per cent.
In other words, the vote for Independents tends to be at least twice the figure shown in the polls. Allowing for this, the last MRBI data of 10 days ago indicated some 18 per cent support for the "non coalition" parties. And this week's IMS poll figures suggest an astonishing figure of 23 per cent support for such candidates.
Now, I am not saying that on election day as many as 20 per cent of voters will vote for the almost 200 candidates standing as Independents or nominated by parties not proposing to join in forming a government.
This alienated vote - which might be described as a vote against forming any government - could well fall back in the final week of the campaign, when the electorate must choose which group will take office next month.
I am saying that, since the 1940s at least, there is no precedent for this degree of alienation from the traditional party system. Between the 1940s and the 1990s the highest such alienated vote was in March 1957, the year when emigration reached a record level and a sense of national failure permeated our community. In that election, the vote for Sinn Fein plus Independents reached 12 per cent.
BY 1992 that figure had already been surpassed in that election 13.2 per cent of votes were cast for candidates of the Green Party, the Workers' Party, Sinn Fein and Independents.
And with both IMS and MRBI polls showing significantly higher support for such candidates, it now seems certain that, even if the alienated vote does not rise to 20 per cent, it is likely to exceed 15 per cent.
What such a figure suggests is that alienation from the political system can be even more acute in prosperity than in conditions of economic failure, if that prosperity is not seen to be equitably shared.
Having said that, it has to be added that a 15 to 20 per cent vote from small parties and Independents will not, of course, translate into a similar proportion of Dail seats. Our electoral system is broadly proportional, but proportionality is mediated through a system, of three, four and five seat constituencies. In constituencies with only three seats, the vote threshold for election is so high that it is rare for an Independent of a small party candidate to be elected. Neil Blaney was an exception to this rule.
And even in four and five scat constituencies, an Independent or indeed a party candidate standing on his or her own without the support of another candidate, will find it difficult to get elected with less than 11 to 12 per cent of the first preference votes. In 1992 only five such candidates in larger constituencies made it to the Dail with less than 11 per cent of the votes.
This is partly because the later preferences of those giving their first preferences to Independents or small party candidates tend to go all over the place when these candidates are eliminated.
The result is that even when, as in the last election, more than 3 per cent of the votes were cast for such candidates, only 2.5 per cent of the seats were won by them four out of 165. (The fifth Independent, the Ceann Comhairle, was of course automatically re elected.)
It is impossible at this stage to say how many Independents or microparty candidates will be elected if the votes for such candidates add up to 15 to 20 per cent of the poll.
But clearly there would be more than four there could, perhaps, be about eight or 10 such "maverick" TDs.
At this stage it seems that if 15 to 20 per cent of voters behave as expected and opt for candidates of, parties other than the five offering alternative coalition governments, it is unlikely that either coalition team will have an overall majority in the next Dail.
AND THAT would not be a good thing. In particular it would not be a good thing for the alienated unemployed and low paid who probably constitute the bulk of this vote.
For in a hung Dail it will not be in the overall interests of the alienated section of the community that will be brought to bear on the alternative coalitions forced to seek the support of a handful of Independents. Instead it will be the specific local interests of some of this handful; one seeking a hospital development here, another a pothole filling exercise there.
If the alienated want to advance their interests, it seems clear that they would best do so by supporting whichever alternative government offers policies most favourable to these interests.
And for the unemployed and disadvantaged that government is unlikely to be a coalition dedicated to reducing tax rates so as to benefit the well off.
They will be helped least of all by a coalition wagged by a tail that wants to cut spending and slash public service employment on a scale achievable only at the expense of reducing drastically the number of teachers and health workers as well as civil servants and local authority officials. And that is the only way in which public service numbers could conceivably be reduced by the PD proposed figure of 5,000 a year.
If that seems an unneutral note upon which to end this preelection article, so be it. I rest on the logic of my analysis. {CORRECTION} 97053000025