Can Fine Gael turn the election around?

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…

The Frustrated and the Content

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…

Love’s Labour Not Entirely Lost?: Constituency-level analysis of the Sunday Times-Behaviour & Attitudes poll (17th August 2014)

Adrian Kavanagh, 16th August 2014  The latest in the series of Behaviour & Attitudes polls has brought good news for the Labour Party after a long period of dismal results in previous such opinion polls. The Sunday Times-Behaviour & Attitudes poll of August 16th 2014, estimates party support levels as follows (and relative to the previous Sunday Times-Behaviour & Attitudes poll): Fine…

Will independents bring ‘real change’?

Posted by Eoin O’Malley, Dublin City University Parties are increasingly unpopular. The recently released European Social Survey (wave 6) shows parties are distrusted by 85% of Irish people (compared with parliament and the government distrusted by 75% and 77% respectively).  Ireland isn’t that unusual; Most countries show a large majority lacking trust in parties. Danes,…

Constituency-level analyses of national opinion polls carried out during 2013: A review.

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…