Fianna Fáil most popular party, new poll shows

gaffer91

Link to IT

Interesting stuff. Not sure if FG deserved such a decline and I'm sure they'll get a certain degree of bounce from what were IMO, relatively successful results from the recent debt negotiations. Good to see SF and Gerry Adams go down.

Scofflaw

About the only satisfaction I can obtain from this is to go and find the post I made shortly after the election predicting it.

resignedly,
Scofflaw

Colonel Sanders

Depressing, utterly depressing

In no way a surprise however.

MidlandsM

The FF bounce back is worrying, I don't ever want to see those inept talentless scumbags run my country again.

raymon

Very depressing news indeed .

Just when you see a glimmer of hope for the country.

Hunchback

FML

michael999999

I certainly haven't forgotten there a party of crooks, fraudsters and liars.

pablomakaveli

Not surprising really. All the polls taken over the last few months gave an indication that this would happen.

fasttalkerchat

Its more to do with FG and Labour slipping and Sinn Fein not maintaining their protest votes.

Solair

Do people have some kind of goldfish like memories ?

Come on people ... Bank Guarantee?? Bank Bail Out?? Property Bubbles?? is that what yiz want? If so, please tell me what time the next plane to somewhere sensible is!

I'm not a huge fan of FG/Lab but, I'd rather eat my own hat than vote FF.

This is the problem with a quasi two party system.

Sierra Oscar

While I am surprised that FF is now the most popular party according to Ipsos / MRBI, the general trend of rising support for FF in recent months does not surprise me all that much. There is serious work being done internally within the organisation, alongside a major effort to reconnect with the electorate with the view to having as much input into the policy formulation process as is possible.

I predicted after the last election that FF would only recover to a sustainable level if the organisation itself was still somewhat intact. The organisation at a grass roots level was allowed to be run down under the leadership of Bertie Ahern and there were many who feared that irreparable damage had been done. However the first signs that the organisation was still intact was the strong turnout at meetings immediately following the election when Micheál Martin launched his first national tour of Ireland with the view to reviving the organisation at a grass roots level. The success of this process was clearly demonstrated at last years Ard Fheis when over 5,000 delegates showed up for the conference. I think at that stage many within the party let out a sigh of relief when they clearly recognised that the organisation was very much alive, and that it was the organisation which would lead the renewal process.

Many people are surprised and wonder why FF support has been steadily on the rise. I am not all that surprised myself when I see the hundreds of members that have been turning out to the various policy conferences which have been held over the last year. Furthermore the fact that hundreds of members of the public have been turning out to the various public information meetings being held (on issues such as the economy, policing, agriculture, health) throughout the country on a weekly basis demonstrates that people are in fact willing to hear out the FF viewpoint and are glad that they have an input into the discussion. Basically I think it is the massive amount of work being done at a local level which is driving the parties growth in the opinion polls, and the performance of key members of the parliamentary party is undoubtedly helping also.

In saying this an opinion poll is an opinion poll, it is merely a reflection of public mood captured in moment and time. The electorate is still highly volatile, and FF members should not take too much satisfaction from these latest poll results. The party could very easily be down in the next round of polls, and undoubtedly will be after the good news regarding the promissory note deal. They key is ensuring that the upward trend continues.

Colonel Sanders

So the question is what chain of events would actually lead to FF being consigned to mediocrity?

There is no hope for Ireland. We're destined to f*ck up yet again even if the current mess ever gets sorted

Solair

That's what will happen though. FG/Lab will do all the donkey work and clean up the mess and then people will give them absolutely no credit for having returned the place to some semblance of normality, blame them for everything and then vote FF!

whitebriar

The reason is simple.
Half the core FF vote walked reluctantly to either Sf or Fg/Lab in disgust at the troika having to come in.

Now they believe (most of the walkers anyway) that Trichet forced Cowen and Lenihan into it.
So its back home to modern day civil war politics again for that diehard group.

raymon

Note to Easons and other stationary suppliers: You may want to stock up on brown envelopes and the like.

Manach

That the inepts of FG and the blowhard ideologues of lab failed to kept such a post election lead is testament to the standard of the Irish political class.

woodoo

I think it is a reaction to the government and it was taken on monday after enda's refusal to apologise properly and the promissory notes looking dodgy.

allthedoyles

Think about it .........half the country was always Fianna Fail.

One general election is not going to change that

armchair fusilier

I have a vain hope that the public inquiry into the banking crises with put a serious dent in ff's recovery, but looks like that won't be happening until some some time in 2014,

pablomakaveli

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Not surprising really. All the polls taken over the last few months gave an indication that this would happen.

Its no wonder some nations laugh at us as a race. Two years after the criminals bankrupt us they are the most popular party.:mad:

26% of our population are traitors to this country.

brandon_flowers

allthedoyles wrote: »

Think about it .........half the country was always Fianna Fail.

One general election is not going to change that

Never posted in politics before but this is hammer, nail, head. And another 30% were always Fine Gael.

Labour, Independents and Sinn Fein have been "lucky" in the past election that there was an anger vote to be had and once that disappears next time it'll be back to **** all FF Vs Blueshirts.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Solair

Sadly it doesn't only happen in Ireland.

Look at the UK, USA, France etc.. they all have de facto 2-party systems.

Scofflaw

allthedoyles wrote: »

Think about it .........half the country was always Fianna Fail.

One general election is not going to change that

Yep, and as whitebriar said, they've managed to convince themselves that the ECB is in some way responsible for everything bad that happened in the crisis. That the crisis itself wouldn't have been anywhere near so bad had it not been for a decade of lax policy goes by most people entirely. And to be fair to all parties, all parties were pandering mightily to the electorate, and the electorate were might happy to be pandered to.

ah well,
Scofflaw

razorgil

Solair wrote: »

That's what will happen though. FG/Lab will do all the donkey work and clean up the mess and then people will give them absolutely no credit for having returned the place to some semblance of normality, blame them for everything and then vote FF!

yeah, talk about history repeating itself. the eighties come to mind. charlie haughey telling us to "tighten our belts". garret and co. came in ( albeit after a few go's), got the shít sorted, and lo and behold, they got fúcked over, and then the rot set in, (aka FF got into power), and we all remember what happened next.....

clairefontaine

I remember predicting this a few years ago to someone and they laughed at me and said no way in hell would it happen.

But I wasn't so sure. My guess is that because Enda is so up the EU's you know what, and such a brown nosing school teacher that the feeling is when dealing with cowboys, send in the gangsters, not the school teachers.

Sir Oxman

Hugely disappointing, but inevitable looking at the Ireland's awfully inbred electoral track record.
*Exasperated*

oscarBravo

clairefontaine wrote: »

My guess is that because Enda is so up the EU's you know what, and such a brown nosing school teacher that the feeling is when dealing with cowboys, send in the gangsters, not the school teachers.

Sadly, that's about the extent of the average voter's insight into current affairs, which is all the explanation we need for this poll's outcome.

Scofflaw

clairefontaine wrote: »

I remember predicting this a few years ago to someone and they laughed at me and said no way in hell would it happen.

But I wasn't so sure. My guess is that because Enda is so up the EU's you know what, and such a brown nosing school teacher that the feeling is when dealing with cowboys, send in the gangsters, not the school teachers.

These would be the "schoolteachers" who just put one over on the ECB to reduce the burden of something the gangsters saddled us with?

I'll take schoolteachers, so. This is the second time I've watched A Fine Gael led coalition cleaning up after a Fianna Fáil splurge, and the second time I've watched the Irish electorate drumming their fingers and waiting for them to go away so they could go back to sleep and not be being annoyed with actual changes to the country.

cordially,
Scofflaw

clairefontaine

Scofflaw wrote: »

These would be the "schoolteachers" who just put one over on the ECB to reduce the burden of something the gangsters saddled us with?

I'll take schoolteachers, so. This is the second time I've watched A Fine Gael led coalition cleaning up after a Fianna Fáil splurge, and the second time I've watched the Irish electorate drumming their fingers and waiting for them to go away so they could go back to sleep and not be being annoyed with actual changes to the country.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Is this the usual drill? FF makes a mess, FG cleans up but that means pain- and pain means unpopularity, and then FF comes in and makes another mess?

Just out of speculative curiosity, how do you think FF would have handled it?

oscarBravo

clairefontaine wrote: »

Is this the usual drill? FF makes a mess, FG cleans up but that means pain- and pain means unpopularity, and then FF comes in and makes another mess?

The Irish political cycle in a nutshell.

Happyman42

oscarBravo wrote: »

The Irish political cycle in a nutshell.

It's not particularily Irish and it's not that unsuprising. A minor shift between two parties that are essentially the same. Lets not delude ourselves while they are backslapping that FG are just as likely to **** up as FF.

Scofflaw

clairefontaine wrote: »

Is this the usual drill? FF makes a mess, FG cleans up but that means pain- and pain means unpopularity, and then FF comes in and makes another mess?

Pretty much. I don't know whether Fine Gael make real changes to the way Ireland works simply because they regularly seem to find themselves cleaning up the mess, or whether they're just like that, but it does seem to be the case that Fianna Fáil are the party of low-regulation, low-change, do the optics and don't bother with enforcement, have a white collar crime agency but starve it of resources, kick the contentious issues to committee and consultants and hope it goes away, while Fine Gael make legislative changes and then enforce them, perhaps because the country is generally up the creek by that stage, but perhaps because they're like that.

clairefontaine wrote: »

Just out of speculative curiosity, how do you think FF would have handled it?

Getting a deal on the promissory notes? I think it would have been a little harder for them, but I don't think the Irish political class in general are poor negotiators - in a sense, their domestic weakness is often their foreign strength, in that they want everyone to come away from the table happy, but with their pockets as full as possible.

cordially,
Scofflaw

armchair fusilier

It's curious how this has happened. The media, by and large, have been ignoring them over the past few years. Their frontbenchers don't have particularly high profiles, I think most people would struggle to name that many of them. Michael Martin doesn't get that much attention either. Yet here they are. Maybe that's the secret of their apparent success.

oscarBravo

Happyman42 wrote: »

It's not particularily Irish and it's not that unsuprising.

I'm well aware that it's an inherent flaw of democracy that you can't force people to get a clue before you let them vote.

Happyman42

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm well aware that it's an inherent flaw of democracy that you can't force people to get a clue before you let them vote.

The point is they aren't shifting or that hidebound all that much..we have an electorate that is not all that diverse, no suprise that we have this flux...both parties are essentially the same.

Scofflaw

armchair fusilier wrote: »

It's curious how this has happened. The media, by and large, have been ignoring them over the past few years. Their frontbenchers don't have particularly high profiles, I think most people would struggle to name that many of them. Michael Martin doesn't get that much attention either. Yet here they are. Maybe that's the secret of their apparent success.

I wouldn't say the media has been ignoring them as such, just relegating them to the level of coverage the opposition usually gets. I would say SierraOscar is quite accurate in his claim of local activity and a rebuilding of the local party base. Bertie was very much a centraliser, and there certainly was a possibility that the local party base had been damaged beyond repair - there were hollowed out cumanns which existed only on paper to give someone an Ard Fheis vote, for example, and the value of an Ard Fheis vote was much diminshed, because everything was managed from the centre - Bertie was a very very strong party boss with no interest in local resistance to his decisions.

So if the party have been out rebuilding furiously, that will have had an effect, and an extremely necessary one - and Lord knows they need to rebuild their finances too, because they were pretty much as bankrupt as Anglo by 2011 - but I would still say that the majority of the shift is simply voters returning from SF and independents where they had gone in disgust. I doubt the party is recruiting new voters, although, again, rock bottom is a good time to join if you're ambitious.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Sponge Bob

I am amazed at the 50% drop in the Green Party ratings ( from 2% to 1% ) myself.

It is not like they did anything wrong since October when the last poll was taken.

Scofflaw

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I am amazed at the 50% drop in the Green Party ratings ( from 2% to 1% ) myself.

It is not like they did anything wrong since October when the last poll was taken.

Margin of error variation - a reminder that polls are just polls.

cordially,
Scofflaw

vinylbomb

I would still say that the majority of the shift is simply voters returning from SF and independents where they had gone in disgust

This is probably correct, and also the most depressing element of the whole thing.
To go from voting FF (moderate Right) to SF (mainly Left but also Right depending on mood/time of day/spin of roulette wheel) or the Independents, some of whom are so far to the Left Marx (Karl, Groucho would see the funny side) would worry about them and then return to voting FF (mod Right) just shows how little policy and political stance matter to a large chuink of the electorate.

I fear predictions that we're doomed to repeat our balls-ups are going to be proved correct.

carlop

Solair wrote: »

Sadly it doesn't only happen in Ireland.

Look at the UK, USA, France etc.. they all have de facto 2-party systems.

The difference is that in the other countries there is at least some ideological differences between the two parties.

In Ireland, there is very little that separates either party that is of modern relevance. They appear to mould themselves to fit whatever the populist issue of the day is.

oscarBravo

carlop wrote: »

The difference is that in the other countries there is at least some ideological differences between the two parties.

In Ireland, there is very little that separates either party that is of modern relevance. They appear to mould themselves to fit whatever the populist issue of the day is.

Yes, I've noticed how the criticism of FG recently has centred almost exclusively on how they're pandering to populist demands. :pac:

Sponge Bob

Scofflaw wrote: »

Margin of error variation - a reminder that polls are just polls.

Great, I won't have nighmares about an FF comeback so.

Lelantos

Sinn Féin have slipped back, perhaps the "apology" has backfired?

Sierra Oscar

Scofflaw wrote: »

So if the party have been out rebuilding furiously, that will have had an effect, and an extremely necessary one - and Lord knows they need to rebuild their finances too, because they were pretty much as bankrupt as Anglo by 2011 - but I would still say that the majority of the shift is simply voters returning from SF and independents where they had gone in disgust.

The finances will be an interesting one to watch, an insight into the parties financial position will be provided at the upcoming Ard Fheis. The annual superdraw was apparently a success this year with recepits up 10%, and considering the party has access to alternative revenue streams as a result of the adoption of 'One Member, One Vote' I would imagine that the financial position is improving relatively quickly.

If I remember correctly the plan was for the party to be completely out of debt by the end of this year, with a sizeable 'war-chest' of funds having being built up in time for the 2014 elections.

FG and Labour followed along the route taken by FF and The Greens which people weren`t happy with.
They spent years making cuts after the mess caused by FF. They made a huge mistake there. When they came into power they should have announced that they reviewed the number and that they were horrific and that they needed to make a severe budget immediately. Got all the harsh cuts out of the way immediately when people could still associate FF and The Greens as the cause.

The alternative consists of extreme left wing candidates, independents and a party with links to a terrorist organisation.
Without new parties this was inevitable.

Another point - now is the ideal time for new parties to form. If they don`t form we are likely setup with these parties for another lifetime.

I`d recommend giving emigrants a vote & people living in Ireland to get up and start new parties.

jank

We will see what the Red Sea polls make of this. I think the magdalene report put a big short term dent into numbers for FG. I still think that FG will be the largest party come the Next GE.

The big three things that they will benefit from are

Going back to the markets.
Prober PS reform (seems they are serious this time with Croke park II)
Upturn in the economy by 2015-2016 as the US and world economy kicks back into gear.
Political reform (they have been poor in this in fairness)

jank

Also out of 1000 polled 480 chose don't know or independant.

writhen

Thread title has to be the most depressing one of the last few years.

docmol

What do they have to do before we consign them to the history books, rape our children?
Oh wait.....

The Browser

The coalition should call a snap election on the back of the deal with the ECB. They'd surely get back in and thereby have seven years in office.

kippy

Scofflaw wrote: »

About the only satisfaction I can obtain from this is to go and find the post I made shortly after the election predicting it.

resignedly,
Scofflaw

Trying to dig up my one as well.
We still havent held the people who had a significant for the mess we are in now to account and don't seem to have learned any lessons from our past, yet these guys are gaining in popularity.
Resignedly as right.