TV3 Poll – 23/09/10

As you’re all aware, TV3 have published their Millward Brown/Lansdowne poll this evening, and the figures are great for Labour, so-so for FF, worrying for FG, and disastrous for SF and the GP.

The state of the parties (excluding 17% DKs) is as follows;
FF 22%
FG 30%
LP 35%
SF 4%
GP 2%
OTH 8%

I’ve put these figures into the spreadsheet, run each constituency, and come up with the following seat totals;
LP 67 (yes, 67)
FG 54
FF 39
SF 1
GP 0
OTH 5

The multiplicity of polls which may or may not be coming our way this week is confusing enough, but on these figures, Enda Kenny is no safer a man than Cowen, and may even be in greater trouble. The poor showing for both of their parties will cause much soul searching in their respective memberships, but Cowen will know, at least, that the Greens won’t be pulling the plug any time soon.

If these figures were repeated on polling day, it would be extremely difficult for FG to match LP on seats, and LP have to start thinking about candidate strategy pretty soon. Areas like Dublin South West and Dublin Central (in my simulation) saw LP lose out on a 3rd seat as a result of poor vote splitting (which would be inevitable if a candidate was added at the last minute).

FG should be unhappy with this poll. Having seen off Bruton (who is damaged goods now) Kenny now has to convince he people he’s up to the job of Taoiseach in challenging times, and this poll suggests that he’s not sealing the deal at the moment. Not alone are FG up about a tenth since the 2007 GE (compared to LP who are on 3.5 times their 2007 score), but Kenny barely rates over half Gilmore’s score on preferred Taoiseach (19% compared to 36%), and is even behind Mr None of the Above, who is the preferred choice of 20%. Cowen rates 11%, which must make depressing reading for him.

FF are pretty much where they’ve been in polls generally. A large percentage of the population believe he lost credibility over garglegate (71%), but that’s not as much as the non-FF vote. More interestingly, 59% of FF voters believe the same, and that may be what ultimately seals his fate. A majority of voters want Cowen to lose the FF leadership, (52/40), with Lenihen leading the only credible challenger Martin (46/15). 27% have no opinion, with Hanafin and Ahern at 4% and 2% respectively.

The GP would be looking at wipeout with these figures. To quote Frank Cluskey in the ’80s after a particularly bad poll for Labour, they are now in the margin of error. LP recovered on that occasion, to the extent of holding 12 seats the following GE on 6.4% of the vote, but it’s looking much grimmer for the GP now. LP had WP transfers to save them, and their vote was ‘lumpier’ than that of the Greens. Most Greens won’t be polling nearly enough to benefit from transfers from anyone.

SF similarly would see their vote well down on ’07, and would be out of the running in all but 5 constituencies, and would be unlikely to win more than 1 seat (in Cavan-Monaghan). With a 3% m.o.e., they will hope that this is just an unfortunate quirk that will be shown up by polls later this week (or night?)

A result like this would cause very testy negotiations for government, and it couldn’t be ruled out that FG would go into coalition with FF – Kenny as Taoiseach and new FF leader Brian Lenihen continuing as Finance Minister (all in The National Interest, of course…)

Right, that’s my initial reaction. I’ll be back with another post if MRBI is released this evening, and plan to do RedC on Saturday evening, and do a more in depth, cross-poll analysis on Sunday.

That’s if the missus doesn’t smash up my laptop before then! 🙂