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Fianna Fáil support plummets to new low

Sunday, October 26, 2008 By Pat Leahy, Political Editor
Political support for Fianna Fáil has collapsed to an historic low and Fine Gael now leads the main government party by seven points, according to the latest Sunday Business Post/RedC monthly tracking poll.

Fianna Fáil support has plunged by 10 percentage points since late September, and just 26 per cent of voters say they would vote for the party in a general election. It is the most dramatic move ever seen in the monthly tracking series.

Support for Fine Gael and the Labour Party has increased sharply by five points and six points respectively, meaning that Fine Gael now leads Fianna Fáil by an unprecedented seven points. However, support for the Green Party, Fianna Fáil’s partner in government, remains relatively steady.

Following a hairshirt budget and the chaotic management of the medical card issue, Fianna Fáil has suffered across every demographic and geographic area.

The falls in support are most dramatic among older voters and farmers.

Only 20 per cent of voters now say they trust the government to manage the public finances out of the downturn.

As the government struggles to bring the public finances under control, today’s results will cause fear among Fianna Fáil TDs, who have seen a public backlash against recent budget measures. TDs face more protests this week, when teachers will demonstrate against cutbacks in education budgets while the Dáil debates a Labour Party motion Wednesday calling for the cuts to be reversed.

The departure of two government-supporting TDs during the political upheavals of last week has raised the prospect of an early general election. If the poll figures - or anything like them - were repeated in a general election, Fianna Fáil would be decimated.

It would suffer by far the worst result in its history. The poll, part of a series which tracks the changes political support every month, was carried out last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday among more than 1,000 voters across the country.

It shows that while half of voters accept the need for some cuts in government spending, almost two-thirds of voters insist that payments such as child benefit, old age pensions and medical cards for the over-70s should be available to all, regardless of costs.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen returns from a trade mission to China this week to face the most serious political crisis since Fianna Fáil returned to power in 1997. In the face of sharply deteriorating public finances and public opposition to spending cuts, he will seek to calm TDs and ministers now fearful for the future of the coalition government.

STATE OF THE PARTIES
Fine Gael 33% (+5)
Fianna Fáil 26% (-10)
Labour 15% (+6)
Greens 6% (-1)
Sinn Féin 10% (+1)
PDs 2% (-1)
Inds 8% (no change)

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