Northern Express

Dave over on politics.ie has revealed in a scoop the details of a RedC poll for Paddy Power, showing Pearse Doherty of SF basically running away with it.

The poll, taken over the weekend, showed the following state of the candidates (percentage 2nd prefs in brackets);

Doherty (SF) 40% (19%)
O’Domhnaill (FF) 19% (10%)
O’Neill (FG) 16% (14%)
McBreaty (LP) 15% (20%)
Pringle (Ind) 8% (9%)
Sweeney(Ind) 2% (7%)

According to Dave, the m.o.e. is 4.4%, which puts FF/FG/LP all bunched together, and RedC are reporting that McBrearty ends up ahead of O’Neill, which will disappoint FG, given O’Neill and Pringle occupy the same neck of the woods. Assuming that McBreaty gets a good transfer from the FG candidate, this would to appear to make him likely to pull in FF and make it to the last count, but he’s so far behind, it’s hard to see him pull in Doherty, who is now red hot favourite to win the seat.

SF will be delighted with this. While they knew Doherty was doing well, the court case in particular giving him the perfect momentum, 40% suggests that his media performances have also gone down well. Certainly he’s polling well outside his republican comfort zone, and is no doubt also benefiting from a bandwagon effect. Of particular comfort to him will be that he has the second highest level of transfers, which suggests that he’ll not be stuck at that 40% as the counts progress. While a large chunk of that 19% may be in the 15% of LP voters, and McBreaty may end up being the only other candidate not eliminated, there’s presumably enough in the other piles (including Pringle’s) to see him over the line. At this stage, he only has to make sure that he doesn’t do anything wrong.

FF will be sick to see how far they’ve dropped. They didn’t really think they could win this election, but they were talking up their chances in media briefings in the hope they could rally the troops sufficiently to get a decent result. This falls well short of that territory, and while they’ll do better in a GE, this suggests that they’ll need their act together to even hold one seat, whenever that happens.

LP should be very pleased. Most commentary has suggested that the campaign has gone badly for them, so if they are ending up ahead of FG on transfers, and competitive with FF for second place, it’s an extraordinary poll for a man who has had more than his share of adversity in the past. They got 3% here in ’07, and about 8% in ’09 in the LEs, so this would suggest that the sort of swings being projected by the spreadsheet in rural Ireland are pretty close to the mark (sorry, Tommy!), and it’s notable that he has the highest percentage of second preferences. He’ll be hoping that he can get some momentum from this, and can gain enough to catch SF. It looks a long shot to me, but given the nature of his vote, I’d say FG would transfer to him in higher numbers than the other way around, and also I suspect that FF voters in Donegal would be less antagonistic to LP than FG, so McBrearty appears to be the only candidate with even an outside chance of catching Doherty. Mind you, one presumes that the margin he overtakes O’Neill by is within the margin of error, so he’s not certain of that by any means, and the impact of this poll will be interesting. I still can’t see him catching Doherty without something game-changing happening, though, and there’s still every chance he could fail to catch O’Neill and O’Domhnaill.

This result would be a disaster for FG, if they end up eliminated before LP (and not much better if they only scraped ahead). How Kenny would spin it, I’m not sure. Certainly by-elections can be funny things, but to be down, and fall so far behind SF, to still be behind FF, and finally to be probably caught by LP, in Donegal of all places, well that’s not good. Their choice of candidate, who hasn’t come across as especially strong could be part of the problem, and suspicions persist that McGinlay doesn’t want to leave the stage just yet. But if this is how it pans out, there’ll be rumblings….

General Election
Also in the figures supplied by Dave are the voting intentions in a GE. These are almost as stunning (in fact, more so, IMO). The pollster makes the important point that the By-election candidates may have a higher profile than sitting TDs at present, and this is particularly important in the context of the FF and FG vote being split so evenly. However, it comes in at

Doherty (SF) 31%
McBreaty (LP) 18%
McGinley (FG) 13%
O’Neill (FG) 12%
Coughlan (FF) 10%
O’Domhnaill (FF) 9%
Pringle (IND) 6%
Sweeney (IND) 1%

That’s almost certainly Doherty elected, with McBrearty, and McGinley both beating Coughlan to the last two seats. NO FF seat in one of their safest constituencies. That’s possibly FF lower than I expect, and I can see a recovery of sorts in a GE. But it’s a bad place to be starting from.

Taoiseach
Also in the poll is a measure of choice of Taoiseach, which is also interesting. Nearly half (46%) prefer Eamon Gilmore, with Kenny (18%), and Cowen (13%) showing very strong support for the Labour leader in a very rural constituency. No doubt FG posters will say that this is all pointless, as he won’t have the candidates to be elected, but the figures from the main poll suggest otherwise. Certainly it would appear reasonable to believe that in a General Election, the campaigning by party leaders would assume greater prominence than in a by-election, and a bit of Gilmore’s star-dust would rub off on the various Frank McBreatys around the country.

All in all? A great poll for SF, a very good one for LP, a pretty bad one for FG, and a lousy one for FF.

I know a few people who’ll raise a glass to that…..