By Michael Gallagher In 2011, all the economic indicators had plummeted since the previous election in 2007, and it was no surprise that the government parties lost support heavily: their vote share declined by 29.7 percentage points and their seat total fell by 66 in a 166-member parliament. In 2016, by contrast, all the economic…
Opposition parties rarely win elections, governments lose them. Yesterday’s RedC poll for the Irish Sun seems to shows Fine Gael on its way to losing one. It is trending downward during the campaign. By now we were supposed to see voters considering government formation and moving back to the government. According to one Fine Gael…
Monday night’s leaders’ debate should put in the ground the idea that the left-right dimension is the key one in politics. On Monday we saw parties such as Renua (the right) and Social Democrats (centre-left) taking aim at what they saw as the enemy, not each other, but the ‘Establishment’. Similarly Gerry Adams tried to distance…
By Timothy J. White and Denis Marnane Assessing a significant anniversary of an important historical event such as commemorating 1916 is like a juggler keeping three balls in the air. There is the event itself, very likely not something about which there is consensus in terms of interpretation; there is the period of time between then…
Adrian Kavanagh, 12th June 2014 (with subsequent updates) The local and European elections brought a (probably quite welcome!) respite to the spate of opinion polls that had appeared in the run up to the May 23rd electoral contests, but June 12th saw the publication of one of the first post-elections opinion polls – the Paddy Power-Red…
Adrian Kavanagh, first posted 28th April 2014, with later updates A series of opinion polls published in the weeks leading up to the May 23rd Local and European elections brought further bad news for the government parties, while offering very positive messages for the Independents and Others grouping and for Sinn Fein in the lead up to…
Adrian Kavanagh, 1st March 2014 March had come in like a lion for the three largest parties in the state but definitely did not go out like a lamb. The latest Sunday Independent-Millward Brown poll saw Fianna Fail, Labour and Fine Gael all losing significant levels of support relative to the previous such poll while Sinn Fein and…
Adrian Kavanagh, 31st December 2013 During the past year (2013), I carried out constituency-level analyses of thirty four different national opinion polls in order to produce Dail-seat estimates based on those support levels. These analyses involved thirteen Red C (Sunday Business Post-Red C and Paddy Power-Red C) polls, twelve Sunday Independent-Millward Browne polls, four Irish Times-Ipsos MRBI polls and five Sunday…
Adrian Kavanagh, 14th September 2013 The most recent Sunday Independent-Millward Brown poll (13th October) brought some relatively disappointing news for the government parties, with both losing a percentage point relatively to the previous such poll of 29th September, with the most significant trend being a three percentage points gain by the Independents and Others political grouping. The latest…
The month of August saw the latest poll from the Red C series of opinion polls as well as two new Sunday Independent-Millward Brown polls, with these continuing the trends observed in polls during 2013, in which Fianna Fail and Fine Gael support hovers around the mid 20s mark (with Fianna Fail faring decidedly better in the…
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