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AS THE CELEBRATIONS and post-mortems begin across the various parties and independents following the local elections, polling day data suggests that a strong ground game is as key as ever.
Polling conducted by Ireland Thinks on polling day last Friday show that respondents were much more likely to have met candidates from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael during the campaign.
As the final few council seats are being filled, the two parties are battling it out to become the largest party, with evidence of the ground game visibile in the poll.
Asked did they meet any of the campaigning candidates from the parties, 35% of respondents said they had met a Fianna Fáil candidate, followed closely by Fine Gael at 34%.
Driving home the importance of familiarity, the poll also found that support for the specific candidate over their party was much stronger among Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael supporters than it was for Sinn Féin.
Asked if they would vote for their selected candidate if they were in another party, 34% of both Fianna and Fine Gael voters said yes, compared to just 18% of Sinn Féin voters.
On this particular question, Labour voters appeared to have the most direct connection with the candidate, with 35% saying they would support the candidate regardless of party.
Sinn Féin will be disappointed to be a long way behind in third place at 18%, with this figure being raised as a potential reason why Sinn Féin has polled far below the party’s expectations.
Sinn Féin will also be disappointed with a finding in the poll which showed that Fine Gael had more support among respondents to the poll who are private renters.
The poll showed that Fine Gael won the support of 20% of private renters, followed by Sinn Féin at 18%, Fianna Fáil at 11% and the Social Democrats.
This contrasts sharply with a The Journal/Ireland Thinks poll from during the campaign which found that those who rent privately were more likely to vote for Sinn Féin at 27% compared to Fine Gael at 17%.
Among those who rent from councils, Sinn Féin also failed to win outright support, securing 20% of votes form that cohort, jointly with Fianna Fáil at the same figure.
Among mortgage holders, Fine Gael (24%) and Fianna Fáil (23%) secured the most amount of support ahead of Sinn Féin (13%).
Among the other interesting nuggets from the polling day poll includes information on when voters made up their minds, with almost half of voters saying they made up their minds only in the final days of campaigning.
This is made up of 16% of people who made up their minds on voting day or the day previous, and 29% of people who made up their minds in the week before polling.
This late decision perhaps coincided with a period when the pressure on Sinn Féin and Mary Lou McDonald was rising amid declining polling numbers.
Only 8% of people said they ‘always’ vote for the party they opted for, with 27% saying they made their minds up in the three weeks before polling or when the date was confirmed.
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This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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That roughly a third of renters would support this government is certainly surprising.
@P. J.: I wonder if some voting boxes went astray in transport? Really surprised at some of the outcomes so far… anyway, that’s my conspiracy bit for the week.
@Lydia Mcloughlin:
Haha hahaha hahahaha haha hahaha hahahaha haha hahaha
@Lydia Mcloughlin: doubtfull as every box that leaves and goes to counting centres has a garda escort
@Lydia Mcloughlin: lol
It seems, Sinn Fein are afraid that voters might bring up their unsavoury past at the doorstep. Such as support for Garda killers, robberies of banks and post offices, to fund their murders. Their protection racketeering, and drug dealing . I can see why they agents didn’t meet with the voters .
@Patrick MC Dermott: they didn’t have a bother at the last general election. They lost support because of their flip flopping. Soft approach to immigration anc suing journalists,
@brian madden: then why did ZERO seats go to immigration parties if immigration was an issue?
@9QRixo8H: Because you could see immigration as being an issue without supporting “solutions” offered by far right candidates
@9QRixo8H: Zero? They got two seats
@Paul Ferguson: Two out of ~950.
@Brendan O’Brien: They didn’t win many seats however they did secure a large portion of the vote. In previous elections they would have been the first eliminated but hung on in some areas until near the end. Their problem is that they have only one policy and aren’t well known in the local areas. There was one elected in my county but they are well known in the community doing a lot of volunteer work etc and that’s what gets you seats in local elections.
Sinn Fein lost the plot by allowing our culture to be eroded not taking a stronger stance on our neutrality & supporting the government in the recent referendum
It was the govts referendum and they won overall lol. The yes parties romped home while the no parties are licking wounds
@Criostoir Mac Raghnaill: How has ‘our’ culture been eroded, and what could SF have done to stop this?
Immigration is the issue that SF lost on . Speculating will not change it .
Australia has very stringent immigration laws and nobody refers to them as right wing and racists
@BL Music: Most racist place I ever lived in.
@BL Music: Anti-immigrant parties got a combined result of 0.9%.
@BL Music: The country was built on racism. Racism is still systemic and built into their politics and society. The reason we don’t hear of it here is more to do with our media, who owns them and the fact the most Australians are white.
@Uí Braonáin: what? Do you really believe our media would not take any opportunity to call white people racist.
The SF meltdown is beautiful
2019 election, SF 81 Seats, FG 255, FF 279. This time around SF will probably gain more seats than FF or FG. The GE in 2020 saw SF massively increase their share of the vote. Why, because people don’t bother voting in local elections because they don’t see the point. Did I vote, yes, did I vote SF, no. I don’t get why the FF and FG are so happy that over HALF the electorate are so demotivated by what they see that they don’t vote.
@Eddie Garvey: Probably because we’ve had covid, cost of living crisis, housing supply issues, energy crisis, war in ukraine, refugees, etc, since the last election. I think many understand that the country had to take repeated bites out of the biggest shit burger in living memory. No government, of any political formulation, would have done anything differently or had any effect on such huge external factors. It’s incredibly easy to crow from the opposition benches criticising, demanding, and pretending none of the above would affect everything here.
People see cynical opportunism, weather vane politics, and bluster for what it is. The centre ground is mostly holding. I’m grateful for that, at least.
Was chatting to a friend last week who was telling me how bad the government was. Asked him yesterday what he thought of the length of the European ballot paper to which he said he didn’t vote.
Absoulte joke how many of the government haters actually stayed at home and let others decide for them.
As for SF they don’t look to be much of an alternative to the current regime they blow with the wind last years racists are people with genuine concerns this year. I think a lot of their voter base is turning of them.
Why are people surprised with the vote for FG and FF? Not everybody is in the same position as those who can’t believe how votes have been cast. The majority of people in the country have made a decent life for themselves and are doing alright. Their votes reflect this. Some have not fared so well and their votes are reflected otherwise. We are not all in the same boat. Some have learned to paddle a bit better than others.
@Sun Rise:
Let’s see how hard children and grandchildren in future have to paddle because they give more of their wages to stuff the pockets of those who happen to have been born when life in Ireland was fair for those who worked.
The pretence of having assets inflated by speculative markets may give some a sense of comfort and achievement, but it comes at a price and is untenable for future generations.
So “mass migration” FFG romped home. While the anti-immigrant parties gained zero seats so far.
@9QRixo8H: if SF worked as hard as you are deflecting they wouldn’t be in this mess lol
@9QRixo8H: F mad!
SF for years courted the social welfare vote. Social welfare recipients are the main drivers behind the anti- immigration voice. This is where they lost support. I am not SF supporter, but I admire the fact that they didn’t go chasing that vote. Well done SF for not jumping on the bandwagon.
@ian: a very nice way of saying social welfare recipients are racists
GOOD BY MARY LU
I was wondering why The Wolfe Tones wasn’t blaring from Shinner radios lol
In my opinion the sf leadership adopting the blind pig headed entitled hubris of ffg alienated alot of people who would normally vote for them
There is a great danger in Ireland that politicians may misread the results as a sanction to continue with convictions that many in Europe have found awful. The misadventure of experimental theorists, where millions died while they were pursuing experiments to make a virus more infectious in humans, is a sign that society may be ready to alter its views on how politicians behave and how they are used.
The idea that May temperatures were the highest recorded in Ireland may be a low point for the politicians and media because the direction of travel is still towards a belief that controlling human behaviour is also controlling the weather/temperatures arising from academic politics.
I hope some commenters here are more considerate of what is being said.
Ask matt the thrasher why sf lost voters he knows everything
@Gerald Kelleher: In the future Ireland will have those who succeed in making a comfortable life for themselves and those who fail to do so. This is not a new phenomenon. It is the same all over the world and not unique to Ireland.
Well done there ian nice little attack on Irish people..Love the way Irish turn on Irish people. Imagine the looney right got in there.lol
Two girls with very little to no respect for their country whatsoever there.. look at the yolk on the right he lost three general elections
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