Green Tide?

As I’m sure you all know, the Irish Times published an MRBI State of the Parties poll yesterday, I’ve only been in a position to write this up this morning.

The poll is very good for SF, not great for FG, and bad for LP and FF.  Frustratingly, ULA remain subsumed in the OTH column, and so I’ve been forced to continue assuming a pro-rata portion of the OTH vote for them based on the last GE.  Figures (and the ‘magic spreadsheet’ projections) as follows;

Projected result	%	seats
FG	33.00%	65
LP	13.00%	27
FF	14.00%	11
SF	21.00%	37
ULA	2.87%	6
GP	2.00%	1
OTH	14.13%	19
	100.00%	166

SF will be delighted with their first 20%+ rating in an established company’s poll.  On these figures, they would be extremely well placed to pick up seats across large swathes of the country, in the main from FF.  As I went through the simulation, constituency after constituency, particularly outside Dublin and especially in Connaught & Munster, they pick up seats from FF.  Of course, they would need to have their candidate strategy in order, but I suspect that by the time the next GE comes along, they will be in a position to do this.

The corollary of this is that FF would be stuffed, seats-wise. While this isn’t a long way south of recent polling, their position vis-a-vis SF would reach tipping point if there was a GE on these figures, and they would in fact be in  danger of dropping into single figures in the next Dail.  They are in a difficult position, and not really sure what part to play in opposition.  Their biggest difficulty is that few people actually believe that the economy is in the mess it is because of anyone other than them, and anyone who also blames the current Govt for prolonging the situation, does so on the grounds that they have been insufficiently different to FF (not fertile ground for Mr Martin and the boys…).  Looking at these figures, it’s hard to see a future for them, and if any of their TDs defect to SF, and on these figures some may be considering it, it could be the end of the road.

LP will be disappointed with these figures, particularly in the aftermath of a party conference, when parties generally have an upward bump.  While they have averaged 15-17% in recent “big-3” polls and this is more or less within the margin of error of that, there is clearly space opening up between SF and them, and if these figures are more than a ‘blip’, they would be significantly behind SF on seats on these figures.  They will, no doubt, be watching closely for the next RedC poll to see if it’s a one-off, or the start of a more significant trend.

FG may be quite dissapointed to be down 3%, but a majority of polls have had them in the 30-35% range, and they are still very much the largest party.  In fact, they might relish an election where they are the largest party by a distance, and where SF are the largest alternative….

Our old friends the Greens re-appear, at 2%, compared to the 1.85% they recorded last year.  Really they need to be in all polls to have an idea how they are doing, given they are within the margin of error – 10 polls over say 8 months where they are 2% in eight, 1% in one and 3% in another, now that would tell you they are at 2% or thereabouts, but really this once in a while stuff tells you very little (other than they haven’t climbed to 4-5%, which I doubt anyone thought anyway…).

OTH…..well, I won’t go on about it, you know my views.  Separate ULA figures please….

TTFN