In the Dark

I couldn’t resist one more update before Saturday’s General Election because there has been another opinion poll (Irish Times/IPSOS-MRBI), which I’ve added to the previous ones here:

• Sunday Times/Behaviour & Attitude: FF 32%; FG 20%; SF 19%
• Irish Times/IPSOS-MRBI: FF 25%; FG 21%; SF 21%
• BusinessPost/Red C: FF 26%; FG 23%; SF 19%
• Daily Mail/Ireland Elects: FF 27%; FG 22%; SF 22%
• Sunday Times/Panelbase: FF 23%; SF 21%; FG 19%
• Business Post/Red C: FF 24%; SF 24%: FG 21%.
• Irish Times/IPSOS-MRBI: FF 23%; FG 20%; SF 25%

This last one is the first to put Sinn Féin in the lead, although to be honest the margin of error is 3% again so there’s really no evidence for a significant change on the last poll by the same outfit.

I still find it very hard to predict what kind of Government Ireland will end up with, but it seems even less likely than before that Leo Varadkar will be leading it.

British friends keep asking me whether all this change is a result of Brexit. I have to say that the answer to that is ‘no’ and neither is it driven entirely by thoughts of a United Ireland. The focus of campaigning is largely on domestic political issues, chiefly housing and health. Most people tend to think Varadkar has handled Brexit pretty well, but his party had failed badly in these other areas.

This entry was posted on February 3, 2020 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Politics with tags Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, General Election, ireland, Sinn Fein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.