General Election Blog by Newstalks Political Analyst Shane Coleman
Blog Entry 8
Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose. It may have been the most extraordinary election in the history of the state but the government that will emerge from this democratic revolution is hardly original.
Fine Gael and Labour have coalesced on six different times in the past – such a combination being the second most common post-election scenario (after a Fianna Fail single party administration) since independence.
From the moment that Fianna Fail and the Greens first faced the wrath of the public back in October, 2008, when it withdrew automatic medical cards for pensioners, such a coalition seemed inevitable.
The only time it seemed in doubt was in the final week of the election campaign when Fine Gael’s incredible surge seemed as if it could bring them an overall majority. Just how close it was to this seemingly impossible goal is evident from the 76 seats it managed to garner from just 36% of the vote.
If the party had managed to secure the 40% it was on in one poll in the final days of the campaign, then it seems as if it would have hit the 83 mark.
It’s impossible to know what caused the last minute tailing off in support for Fine Gael. Enda Kenny’s painfully inadequate response to being grilled by Micheal Martin on the Fine Gael plan during the final debate may well have been a factor. That, combined with Labour’s good last week of the campaign, may have convinced some voters that a single party government was not desirable. Fine Gael will never have a better opportunity to get across the line on its own.
But that shouldn’t take away from the party’s stunning performance – its best ever in seat terms. Enda Kenny, a man whose political career seemed to be over last June, is going to be first Fine Gael leader to be elected Taoiseach by the people in a general election since Garret FitzGerald back in 1982.
The next four or five years will determine whether he is up to the task ahead but certainly there is no denying his fortitude and political nous and skill to get to where he is today. He has earned the right to be Taoiseach – the hard way.
And having spent so long getting to the top job, he is not going to jeopardise everything by forming an unstable administration dependent on independents and/or outside support from Fianna Fail.
Fine Gael, for tactical reasons, has been quick to talk up the potential options it has in forming a government. But such talk is codswallop. There may be 19 ‘others’ in the new Dail but how many of them would be suitable government bedfellows for Fine Gael?
Twelve of the 19 would be seen as the being on the left – the five United Left Alliance TDs, along with Maureen O’Sullivan, Finian McGrath, Mick Wallace, Luke Flanagan, Thomas Pringle, Catherine Murphy and John Halligan – and pretty much all of them could be ruled out to back an FG government.
Of the remaining seven, both Mattie McGrath and Noel Grealish didn’t fancy it when the heat really came on the government in the last Dail and voted with the opposition. Shane Ross and Fine Gael have a bit of history and the party will not want to be dependent on his vote. Stephen Donnelly, if he makes it in Wicklow, advocates taking a hard line on the bailout package. That is something which Fine Gael might have agreed with in opposition but is likely to find that in government it is wholly unrealistic.
Michael Lowry and the Healy-Rae camp have shown they would stay rock-solid regardless of the public pressure. But even if ex-Fianna Failer Tom Fleming proves to be made of similarly stern stuff, that’s nowhere near enough to form a government.
Fine Gael and Labour is the only show in town and the contacts have already begun between the two parties, with a few to entering formal negotiations. The teams are likely to include Phil Hogan and Michael Noonan for Fine Gael and Pat Rabbitte and Brendan Howlin for Labour, with Alan Shatter and Joan Burton also being tipped to take part.
There are significant policy differences between the two. They disagree over the balance that needs to be struck between tax increases and spending cuts, on a property tax, on water charges, on child benefit cuts, on the universal social charge and in many other areas.
All these are surrmountable with compromise from both sides. What may be trickier is Labour’s insistence during the campaign on a longer timescale to bring the budget deficit down to 3% of GDP. Fine Gael was very critical of Labour’s 2016 extended deadline during the campaign and it’s hard to see how the new government could get this past the EU/IMF. Unless they can find someway of fudging the issue (talks for government formation generally produce a number of such fudges), one of the two parties is going to have concede on this one and that won’t be easy to do.
But, of course, the real problem isn’t putting the government together (both parties are gagging to be in power). It’s what lies ahead. There are plenty of extremely experienced politicians in both Fine Gael and Labour and they will be acutely aware that unless the new government is very careful, it could soon be almost as unpopular as the outgoing administration. Even being very careful, that may still happen given the tough decisions that will have to be made.
The first real test will come with the EU summit in March, which is likely to focus on Europe’s bailout scheme. If there is nothing tangible to show from that summit, then some of the language used by Fine Gael and Labour about re-negotiating Ireland’s bailout deal and pain-sharing with bondholders may start to sound a little hollow. Whatever happens, Fine Gael and Labour should enjoy their courtship over the next ten days or so because once their relationship is consummated, the honeymoon is certain to be a very brief one.
Blog Entry 7
Finally, the day of reckoning approaches. Tomorrow the Irish people will go to the polls for what promises to be the most extraordinary general election in decades and arguably, since the foundation of the state. So with campaigning come to a close, it’s as good a time as any to look at the main parties and assess how the election has been for them and what their likely seat tallies will be.
Fine Gael
The fact that Fine Gael is the first party we’re coming to speaks volumes. For the past 80 years that slot has been filled by Fianna Fail, but no longer. The party has run an extraordinarily effective campaign, which has clearly been in planning for months. Timing wise, it worked perfectly. FG’s message of no tax increases came just as people were starting to realise the impact the universal social charge was having on their pay packets. The party’s five point plan was pushed to the point of tedium but it has worked brilliantly in clarifying what Fine Gael stands for. Critically, Fine Gael has turned its biggest weakness (Enda Kenny and the public perception of him) into the party’s biggest strength by emphasising the importance of the team and promoting the likes of Michael Noonan, Richard Bruton and Leo Varadkar. This has also made Kenny look good – demonstrating that he is the type of leader is confident enough to delegate; an effective chairman who is first among equals.
Fine Gael has set the agenda all through the campaign, particularly with its ruthless targeting of Labour, which it managed to paint as a high tax party. Can Fine Gael win an overall majority? It is certainly very possible. But the more I reflect on Tuesday night’s debate, the less convinced I become about Kenny’s performance. He didn’t put a foot wrong in the first half but he struggled quite badly when Martin put him under pressure on where Fine Gael was going to find €6bn in savings. This may have sowed a seed of doubt in the minds of some voters. The bottom line is that Fianna Fail just fell short of a majority in 2002 at a time of unprecedented economic boom and Fine Gael may just endure the same fate at a time of unprecedented economic crisis. But virtually certain to have its best ever general election.
Likely seat total: 76/77 seats.
Labour
Given the huge level of expectation a few months ago, Labour has had a somewhat disappointing campaign. It didn’t achieve the same kind of consistency of message that Fine Gael managed. There were also mistakes, the most glaring being Eamon Gilmore’s “Labour’s way or Frankfurt’s way” line, which may have alarmed middle class voters. It struggled to get to grips with FG’s accusation that Labour was a high tax party. And the party may also have over-reacted to the potential threat from Sinn Fein – was it this that prompted the tough talking on Frankfurt and the EU/IMF deal?
But a lot of the party’s problems were not of its own making. The innate conservatism of the Irish electorate went against Labour, with many disgruntled Fianna Fail voters preferring Fine Gael because it was the nearest ideological alternative. Labour’s lack of a presence and infrastructure on the ground in a number of constituencies was always going to come against the party. Yes, Gilmore’s national profile was very good but it also needs to be backed up by a strong local organisation and it was always asking a lot to fill that deficit in one Dail term.
We also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Labour, almost certainly, is still going to have a very, very good election. The party has made enormous progress (witness Gilmore’s presence in the leaders’ debate). There will be a Labour Taoiseach one day, but just not yet.
Likely seat total – 32-35 seats. But given the trend in the polls, it could also be a little under this figure.
Fianna Fail
Where to start with Fianna Fail? The brand is totally toxic and nothing Micheal Martin has done (and in many ways he has been the most impressive leader of the election campaign) has been able to address that. The party is going to be hammered, the only questions are: by how much and whether it can recover? Will high profile candidates, who have been doing the work on the ground for a decade and more, give FF some lift on its national poll ratings? Perhaps. The Irish Times poll in Dun Laoghaire, showing Fianna Fail’s two candidates at a combined 18%, and Mary Hanafin taking a seat, suggests it might. But we’re only talking a couple of points. Dublin remains a huge problem and the party could conceivably end up with just one or two seats there. It remains to be seen what future Fianna Fail has – at an absolute minimum it needs twenty-plus seats and Labour in government, rather than on the opposition benches – but the days of the party’s utter domination of Irish politics look finished.
Likely seat total: In the low 20s and maybe less.
Sinn Fein
It seems on course to have a good election, although party strategists will be worried that its support has slipped over the course of the campaign and that Sinn Fein traditionally secures less than its poll rating in elections. Some of the Dublin seats many of us had given them may not prove quite as secure as expected. Against that, the party has played the populist card – promising to burn bondholders, reverse welfare cuts, the student registration fee and the universal social charge. The budgetary numbers don’t come close to adding up but it’s a highly seductive message which was always going to appeal to a constituency.
Likely seat total: 10-13 seats.
The Green party
An election campaign to forget for the country’s unluckiest political party. The Greens didn’t cause the crisis (they were probably the only ones warning about the property bubble) and they’ve taken hugely difficult, but necessary decisions, in government. But they are currently incurring the wrath of the electorate. It’s going to be a long day for them on Saturday.
Likely seat total: 0-1 seats.
Others/Independents
Independents and others are going to perform strongly, as happened in 2002 when Fine Gael imploded. We’re going to see various types of independents – right of centre, left wing and constituency oriented and we’re probably going to see a couple elected that nobody – not even the political parties with their private polls – saw coming.
Likely seat total: Very hard to quantify because many of them will be scrapping for the final seats, but somewhere in the teens looks possible.
Blog Entry 6
Now that the four leaders’ debates are over, many people must be wondering what all the fuss is about. After over five hours of engagement, there is definitely an argument that ‘less is more’ and maybe that is one we should bear in mind for future elections.
The reality is that the four debates combined seem to have had less impact than the one debate that took place in the 2007 General Election between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny.
Some of that is obviously down to the fact that, with Fine Gael so far ahead, this election is far less of a cliff hanger than the one four years ago. But the sheer volume of debates also took its toll.
The first debate on TV3 was excellent knock-about stuff, but it obviously suffered from the absence of Enda Kenny (Hamlet without the prince?). The second five-way debate on the Frontline simply had too many participants, which meant it became a battle of soundbites.
The third debate (with Kenny, Micheal Martin and Eamon Gilmore) on TG4 was very professional and did have real depth. But sadly, a debate as gaeilge isn’t going to have the same impact as one i mbearla.
Last night’s debate was certainly the main attraction: the leaders of the three main parties head-to-head for an hour an a half. But the fact that three debates preceded it (and that it took place less than 60 hours before the polling booths opened) meant its importance was seriously diluted.
Viewed in isolation though, last night’s debate was pretty good stuff. And, strangely enough, all three leaders will be happy with their performance.
Enda Kenny didn’t appear to make any serious mistakes. Indeed, for the first hour or so, he was probably ahead of both Martin and Gilmore. He very pointedly remained above the fray, in full statesmanlike mode – at one point gently chastising the other two leaders for engaging in a spat and pointing out that “nobody had heard the exchange” because there were so many interruptions.
There were some put-downs for Martin, reminding viewers how Ireland’s competitiveness ranking had slipped during the Fianna Fail leader’s tenure in Enterprise, Trade and Employment and recalling that party’s previous claims that the economy had “turned a corner” and the bank guarantee was the cheapest bailout in the world.
However, he began to slightly overdo the aloofness, taking exception at even the slightest interruption. And he seriously struggled when Micheal Martin put him under pressure about the €6bn in savings Fine Gael is planning to introduce. He had no answer to Martin’s sustained questioning as to where that money was going to come from, finally resorting to a weak ‘it’s all there on www.finegael.ie’ line.
But overall, he will be more than happy with his performance.
As will Eamon Gilmore, who had his best outing and arguably edged the proceedings. There was a consistency to his message that hasn’t always been there in this campaign and he had a much stronger presence.
While there were a few early swipes at Fine Gael, overall there was a very noticeable shift away from attacking Kenny and his party. At one point, he was visibly flirting (purely in a political sense, of course) with Kenny, stating that a particular issue was something the two would have to sit down and hammer out in the next week or so.
Martin was easily the most aggressive of the three, although some of the criticism of this from commentators seems a little po-faced – it is supposed to be a debate after all.
The gung-ho approach was clearly a pre-planned strategy. While it probably did irritate Fine Gael and Labour supporters, they were not the target audience. Martin went out to appeal to the Fianna Fail base in a bid to ensure they get out and vote on Friday. He wanted to boost morale and finally give them something to cheer about and he probably succeeded in doing that.
He really went for Kenny on the Fine Gael plans for taxes and spending cuts and he was like a dog with a bone about the lack of detail being offered by the Taoiseach-in-waiting. He mocked Kenny’s tendency to resort to pre-pared lines when he cut off the Fine Gael leader and declared ‘I know what you’re going to say: I’ve been in power for 14 years, Fine Gael has a five year plan and let’s get Ireland working’, adding that we needed a bit more than that.
His best point was when he noted that despite Fine Gael and Labour’s trenchant criticism of the government’s budgetary policy, they were not promising to reverse one single cut or tax increase.
Martin also did surprisingly well in health. The idea of universal health insurance is something that many voters (this one included) finds very appealing, but the Fianna Fail leader managed to sow a few seeds of doubt as to how much it would cost. He certainly made the best of a bad hand but last night and in the previous three encounters.
Whether or not, his performances will do anything to shore up the Fianna Fail vote is open to question. Garret FitzGerald believes his strong performance in the 1987 leadership debate against Charlie Haughey may have helped limit the inevitable damage to his outgoing government in the ensuing election, but there is absolutely no evidence that Martin’s good performances in all four debates is having any impact on his party.
In time, the same may well be said about the debates’ influence (or lack of) on GE 2011.
Blog Entry 5
JUST four days to polling and still there is no sign of any lift in Fianna Fail’s support. At 16%, the party will be doing well to win twenty seats and even if it can get up to 20% on election day, massive seat losses are guaranteed.
A number of records associated with Fianna Fail are certain to be shattered in Friday’s election. Fianna Fail has been the biggest party in the Dail in every general election since it first took power in 1932. Its lowest ever share of the first preference vote in any general election was 39%. And it could also boast that the party had won at least one seat in each constituency in every general election since its foundation in the 1920s.
Now it stands on the verge of being usurped not just by Fine Gael, but also Labour. Its vote could be less than half of its previous worst ever performance and there are over 25 constituencies where it is in danger of not winning a seat.
The other big story relating to Fianna Fail is likely to be the number of ministers that will lose their seats.
Big name casualties are not a new phenomenon in Irish politics. In the landmark 1977 general election, three cabinet ministers Conor Cruise O’Brien, Justin Keating and Paddy Cooney, along with parliamentary secretary (as junior ministers were known then) Pat Joe Reynolds, lost their seats.
But this general election is almost certain to witness a wipe-out of ministers on an unprecedented scale.
Of the current cabinet of seven, just three members look safe: Brian Lenihan in Dublin West, Eamon O’Cuiv in Galway West and (probably) Brendan Smith in Cavan-Monaghan.
A recent Irish Times constituency poll suggested that Mary Hanafin will hang on in Dun Laoghaire, but it will be desperately tight. The odds are a bit better for Mary Coughlan in Donegal South-West but it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if it emerged on Saturday that she lost out. Pat Carey is hugely up against it in Dublin North-West, with most pundits predicting that he won’t make it.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has followed the path of former cabinet ministers, Tony Killeen, Batt O’Keeffe, Dermot Ahern, Noel Dempsey and Mary Harney, in opting not to contest the general election.
The two Greens, who up until a few weeks ago were members of the cabinet , are also facing an uphill struggle. Eamon Ryan still has a chance of taking the final seat in Dublin South, but it will take a minor miracle for John Gormley to survive in nearby Dublin South-East.
Micheal Martin, who also resigned last month as a minister, is a banker to hold his seat, but it is very possible that 11 of the cabinet of 15 who brought in the budget last December won’t be members of the 31st Dail. That would be an extraordinary rate of attrition.
And, if anything, the junior ministers look even more vulnerable. Michael Finneran is not contesting the election. Both Ciaran Cuffe and Mary White, who were junior ministers up until last month, seem certain to lose out in Dun Laoghaire and Carlow-Kilkenny respectively. Chief Whip John Curran is also under huge pressure in Dublin Mid-West. Also in Dublin, Conor Lenihan in Dublin South-West and Barry Andrews in Dun Laoghaire are not expected to be returned.
The same holds for Aine Brady in Kildare North, John Moloney in Laois Offaly, Peter Power in Limerick City and Martin Mansergh in Tipperary South. Even if Fianna Fail gets to 20%-plus, these four will all struggle to hold on.
Dick Roche looks a 50-50 bet (at best) in Wicklow, as does Billy Kelleher in Cork North-Central.
When you combine all the names, anything up to 23 of those who held cabinet or junior ministerial rank at the turn of the year could be gone from the next Dail.
Next Saturday promises to be one of the most extraordinary days in Irish political history.
Blog Entry 4
ANOTHER day in the election campaign, another free-for-all between Fine Gael and Labour. The intensity of the exchanges between the two parties is quite extraordinary. Fianna Fail is effectively irrelevant as the would-be coalition partners relentlessly go at each other.
And it has to be said that Labour, although it keeps coming back for more, is coming out by far the worst from the exchanges.
Enda Kenny may have a point when he says that the newspaper adverts placed by Labour, highlighting what it claims are Fine Gael’s plans for stealth taxes, are a sign of panic and desperation.
Indeed, it’s hard to blame Labour for feeling that way. A few months ago the ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ line was beginning to sound credible. But, with just a week to go to polling, nobody seriously believes that is now a runner. And worse, much worse, the consolation prize of five or six cabinet seats is now also in danger.
It’s like a football team that for months was in a two horse race for the Premiership, within a few short weeks finding itself at risk of not even getting one of the Champions’ Leagues places.
And politics is like football in at least one respect. Once you lose momentum and form, it can be hard to get it back. And make no mistake Labour has lost momentum and form.
For much of the past two years, it has generally outsmarted Fine Gael in terms of tapping into the mood of the electorate. But that has changed. Fine Gael’s message of less tax and smaller government was timed beautifully coming as it did just around the time people were getting their first post-budget pay packets. The party has stuck rigidly (to the point of boredom) to its core message and its five point plan.
The Labour message, in contrast, has seemed inconsistent and, despite its statement that it wouldn’t raise taxes for those earning less than €100,000, Labour has allowed itself be painted as a high tax party. Eamon Gilmore, the most effective politician of the last Dail, has seemed curiously out-of-sorts. He was too over-the-top with his table thumping ‘Labour’s way or Frankfurt’s way’ rhethoric of the early days of the campaign and then he was too meek and quiet in the subsequent TV debates.
Labour also hasn’t made the most of its heavy hitters such as Ruairi Quinn and Pat Rabbittee in the way Fine Gael has with the likes of Michael Noonan, Leo Varadkar, Richard Bruton and Brian Hayes.
It is also possible that as the election has got closer the electorate, despite being furious about what has happened, are less interested in rhethoric and are looking more for leadership and a plan out of the mess rather than having their anger reflected back upon them. I can’t help feeling that some of Labour’s problems began with the kind of language some of its senior figures used in the wake of the EU/IMF intervention – one, for example, stating that the country was “banjaxed”.
Whatever the reason, Labour’s support seems to be on the slide. One poll today has the party on just 18% and there is a view among some in rival parties that Labour could even end up around the 15% mark it was on the local elections. And while the party will certainly end up with more seats than Fianna Fail (a lot more at that), the possibility of it ending up with a lower share of the first preference vote can’t be entirely ruled out.
But that’s the gloomy scenario. On a more positive note, the party is virtually guaranteed to win seats in the following constituencies: Carlow-Kilkenny, Cork East, Cork North-Central, Cork South-Central, Cork South-West, Dublin Central, Dublin Mid-West, Dublin North, Dublin North-Central, Dublin North West, Dublin North East, Dublin South, Dublin South-Central (2), Dublin South-East (2), Dublin South-West, Dublin West, Dun Laoghaire, Kerry North, Limerick, Longford-Westmeath, Louth, Meath East, Tipperary North, Wexford and Wicklow.
That gives it 27 seats straight off – not a bad base at all. It will also has a very good chance of second seats in Dublin Mid-West, Dublin South-West and Dun Laoghaire.
While second seats in Cork North-Central, Dublin North-East, Dublin North-West, Longford-Westmeath and Wicklow can’t be ruled out.
I haven’t included Waterford or Galway West in the certainties list, despite the party currently holding seats there. With Brian O’Shea retiring, Labour is under pressure from independent John Halligan to hold its seat in Waterford and the same holds in Galway, where Michael D Higgins’ successor Derek Nolan could find it more difficult than anyone would have been envisaged a month or so ago.
That said both of these seats could yet end up being held by Labour, while the likes of Tipperary South and Kerry South could also be regained. If all those seats come in then the party is looking at a seat tally in the high 30s and maybe higher, but unless the party manages to reverse the trend towards Fine Gael in the coming days, a repeat of the 1992 Spring Tide tally (33 seats) looks more likely at this stage.
That would be a very impressive return but obviously given how high expectations were a couple of months ago, it wouldn’t feel that for Labour supporters.
And it certainly wouldn’t feel like that if somehow the next government is formed without them. This is probably the last shot for many of senior Labour figures (Gilmore, Burton, Rabbitte, Quinn, Howlin etc.) to return to ministerial office. After all the ground work that has gone in over the past two years, they will see it as unthinkable that they will fall short. And they will do whatever it takes over the week to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Blog Entry 3
If Fianna Fail strategists had any lingering doubt about the extent of the meltdown the party is facing, the two latest opinion polls will have firmly put paid to them.
Up to yesterday, a consensus was forming that Fianna Fail would end up in the low 30s seat wise – an abysmal performance by the party’s high electoral standards but a foothold, at least, on which it could rebuild. Even the bookmakers’ odds reflected that. Up to last night it was still possible to get long-ish odds on Fianna Fail coming in under thirty seats.
But Tuesday’s Evening Herald poll putting the party at 10% in Dublin and today’s Irish Independent poll, which shows it at a miserable 12% nationally, demonstrates that unless there is a dramatic shift in Fianna Fail’s fortunes between now and polling day, the party will be doing well to get close to twenty seats, never mind breaking thirty.
Whatever bounce was caused by Micheal Martin’s elevation to leader has well and truly evaporated. Martin’s personal ratings are the best of all the leaders and he has hardly put a foot wrong in the campaign. But the Fianna Fail brand is so toxic it is making absolutely no difference.
And that toxicity means that not only will the party’s first preference vote be awful, but Fianna Fail candidates will seriously struggle to get transfers which will be crucial to get the final seats across the 43 constituencies.
So just how bad can it get for Fianna Fail? If the party ends up on just 10% in Dublin, it will be doing well to win three or four seats in the capital. Brian Lenihan in Dublin West, Dara O’Brien in Dublin North and Michael Mulcahy in Dublin South-Central look the three most likely, but even these three will be nervous about their prospects.
Certainly, there would be no seat in Dublin North-East, North-West or North-Central on those figures, while John Curran probably wouldn’t make it in Mid-West. Chris Andrews in Dublin South-East and Maria Corrigan in South may be in the shake-up for the final seats. But with Fianna Fail certain to be transfer repellent, they simply can’t get elected if the party remains at 10% – neither either can Mary Hanafin or Barry Andrews in Dun Laoghaire or Conor Lenihan/Charlie O’Connor in South-West.
Nationally, the picture isn’t looking a whole lot better. The Micheal Martin factor might yet give the party two seats in Cork South Central – although today’s poll in the Examiner from that constituency suggests the odds on that happening are worse than 50:50.
Fianna Fail could just squeeze two out of Laois-Offaly, but other constituencies such as Cavan-Monaghan, Wexford and Carlow-Kilkenny look unlikely to produce two seats without a rise in the party’s support levels.
The reality is that, with the exception of Martin himself, the automatically returned Ceann Comhairle Seamus Kirk and Willie O’Dea in Limerick City, Fianna Fail has no safe seats. But along with the aforementioned Cork South-Central and Laois-Offaly, I’m giving Fianna Fail one seat in Carlow-Kilkenny, Cavan-Monaghan, Clare, Cork North-West, Donegal South-West, Galway West, Galway East, Limerick, Limerick City, Longford-Westmeath (probably), Mayo, Waterford and Wexford.
That gives the party between 16 and 18 seats. But after that things get a lot tighter.
It should win one in Kildare South but with independent Paddy Kennedy going strong that is no longer guaranteed. Billy Kelleher may yet make it in Cork North-Central, however it’s far from assured. The same holds for Thomas Byrne in Meath East, while one of the two Fianna Fail candidates has a chance of taking the final seat in Wicklow. Donegal North-East (where the party once effectively had all three seats if the Independent FF seat is factored in) is by no means a banker. It just might squeak home, but it will be very tight.
Sligo-North Leitrim, Meath West, Cork East, Cork South-West, Louth (to add to Seamus Kirk’s automatic seat) and Kildare North look longer shots.
And the party will finder it even harder to save a seat in Kerry South and Roscommon South-Leitrim. There are at least 27 constituencies where Fianna Fail is in serious jeopardy of not winning a seat (extraordinary given that the party has never previously failed to win at least one seat in any constituency).
There is the possibility that the incumbency factor may help save some of the above seat, with a percentage of voters staying loyal to high profile TDs who have delivered for their constituencies in the past. But, based on the evidence of the published constituency polls to date, there is little sign of that happening.
The harsh truth is that Micheal Martin may have just nine days to save Fianna Fail from utter irrelevancy.
Blog Entry 2
AS many people expected, last night’s leaders debate was something of a damp squib. Too many participants; too little time to answer questions and, generally, too little depth – in truth, it was hard going.
Breakfast presenter Ivan Yates was spot on this morning when he complained strongly about the debate’s format, arguing that it reduced politics to the politics of the sound-bite and quip. There was no time for anything else (something which Gerry Adams seemed most in tune with) and there was precious little interaction between the five leaders.
The two winners – if that is the right term – were probably Enda Kenny and Gerry Adams. That’s not because they were the best debaters – they certainly weren’t – but because they were the two with the most serious questions hanging over them beforehand and they emerged relatively unscathed.
I was surprised to hear some of the glowing descriptions of Kenny’s performance by commentators speaking on television immediately after the debate. He didn’t make any mistakes and did ok. But I don’t agree he was relaxed and statesmanlike. He seemed edgy and was tightly gripping the podium throughout.
Kenny was also heavily scripted (how many times did he name check the various Fine Gael policy documents?). There were also a few shaky moments. He just about got away with his response that “everybody is going to suffer here” and he looked very ill-at-ease when he was clearly struggling on the issue of Fine Gael’s growth projections.
He and his party will be happy to have come through without any major mistakes. However, the bigger test is yet to come in the three way set piece when he is certain to be a lot more exposed to the cut and thrust of real debate.
Gerry Adams will also be pleased enough. There was no repeat of his disastrous 2007 performance when he came across as out-of-touch with life south of the border. He clearly had done his homework this time. He adapted quickest to the extremely limited format, firing out soundbites (‘put the money into jobs, not the banks’, ‘do we support the golden circles or do we support people?’, ‘the figures don’t add up because we keep giving our money away’, ‘I’m against social welfare fraud but I’m also against white collar fraud’).
Adams was outrageously populist: burn the bondholders; abandon the EU/IMF deal, dump the universal social charge, reverse the cutbacks, pour billions into job creation. But there is no doubt that his stance will appeal to a certain constituency. And because of the debate format it was difficult for the other participants to expose the reality that the Sinn Fein numbers don’t add up. Micheal Martin had to resort to a sound-bite himself to highlight this fact, quipping that Adams would make a great presenter of the Late Late Show because he was adopting a ‘one for everyone in the audience’ approach to the election.
Martin is clearly the best debater of the five and had another good outing. Looked at purely in isolation, he was the winner of the debate. But the Fianna Fail brand is so toxic at the moment, it’s difficult to know if it will make any difference. The fact that Martin quite clearly targeted Gerry Adams much more than Enda Kenny or Eamon Gilmore was extremely telling and speaks volumes about the party’s ambitions (or lack of) for election day. Fine Gael and Labour are no longer on the horizon. It’s about getting Fianna Fail up to 30-plus seats and making sure it, rather than Sinn Fein, is the main opposition party.
Televised debates just don’t suit Eamon Gilmore. He is a brilliant Dail perfomer but that is a very different format where the leader is effectively given a soapbox on which to ventilate. He seems almost too polite and stand off-ish to prosper in the debate setting. Gilmore certainly didn’t perform badly and he came out with some good lines (particularly when he described Micheal Martin as the ‘great pretender’) but, as with last week’s debate, he just wasn’t assertive enough.
John Gormley may have surprised a few people. He had a slow start in which he struggled to adapt to the format. But he came across as honest and straight. There was an almost wistful air to his comments – a kind of ‘we did our best in awful circumstances and the next crowd is going to find it just as challenging’ tone. It was a decent performance but it won’t be enough to save the Greens from electoral meltdown.
Overall, the debate was a disappointment. We are in the middle of arguably the most important general election since the early days of the state and the greatest economic crisis we have ever faced. But unfortunately there was little sense of that last night.
Blog Entry 1
Sunday’s Red C poll has dramatically altered perception of the general election contest. Most political commentators (this one included) had been working on the assumption that the formation of the next government was a foregone conclusion and the only real issue at stake was the breakdown of cabinet seats would between Fine Gael and Labour.
But the Sunday Business Post poll has caused all of us to have a rethink. A Fine Gael-Labour government is still the most likely outcome. But make no mistake the previously impossible prospect of Fine Gael winning an overall majority – or being in a position to form a government with the support of independents – is now at least a possibility.
At 37%, Fine Gael is just a few points away from that target. It’s true Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fail failed to get an overall majority in the last two elections despite getting close to 42% of the first preference vote. But in 2002, Fianna Fail was only a few hundred votes away from getting a majority on that level of support.
And the way this general election is shaping up, the percentage vote required to get an overall majority may end up being the lowest in the history of the state. The reason for that is that Fine Gael is so far ahead of the rest and the non-Fine Gael vote is scattered in so many different directions.
In the General Election of January, 1982, Fianna Fail failed to win a general election with over 47% of the first preference vote because it was essentially a two horse race between it and Fine Gael and the party failed to attract transfers from across that divide.
But this general election is different. Fine Gael is the only party with a big block of support and, with the remaining votes fragmenting across Labour, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, the Greens, the United Left Alliance and the dozens of independents, it is likely to get a considerable seat bonus (meaning it’s percentage first preference vote would translate into an even higher percentage of Dail seats).
It’s impossible to know exactly how big this seat bonus will be. But it could – stress ‘could’ rather than ‘will’ – mean that an overall majority will be achievable with little over 40% of the vote. If that is the case, then Fine Gael is incredibly close to something that has never been the remotest reality for the party in the past. Even during the halcyon Garret FitzGerald days, the highest seat tally the party achieved was 70 seats (with 39% of the vote). As things stand it’s on course to comfortably exceed that tally and get close to the magic 83 figure.
The big stumbling block to Fine Gael’s overall majority aspirations had seemed to be Dublin. The feeling was that voters in the capital weren’t keen on Enda Kenny and that it was Labour, rather than Fine Gael, that would clean up as Fianna Fail imploded. Going through the constituencies, it was difficult to envisage Fine Gael winning any more than 13 of the 46 seats on offer in Dublin which would mean the party having to take almost 60% of the seats outside the capital to get to 83.
But based on these latest poll figures, Fine Gael has overtaken Labour in Dublin and if that swing continues then second seats are very much on in constituencies such as Dublin Mid-West, Dublin South East, Dublin South-Central, Dublin South East and even Dun Laoghaire and Dublin West.
The one worry Fine Gael strategists must be having is the high number of candidates the party is running in some constituencies (four in Cavan-Monaghan, three in Cork East, four in Galway East), something which could yet backfire.
Overall, the odds are still against Fine Gael getting to 83 seats. The most popular politician of the past fifty years Bertie Ahern couldn’t do it at the height of the Celtic Tiger. And over the final days of the campaign both Kenny and Fine Gael’s numbers for the public finances – some of which look a little on the optimistic side – are going to come under intense scrutiny. But there is no doubt that Fine Gael currently has serious momentum. And if that continues until polling day, anything is possible.
