ANALYSIS:While Gallagher has clear lead, the ability of Higgins to attract second preferences may still prove crucial
SEÁN GALLAGHER is on course to succeed Mary McAleese as president unless there is a massive shift in public opinion in the final days of the presidential election campaign, going by the results of the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll.
The poll taken last Thursday and Friday gives Gallagher a comfortable lead over his nearest rival, Michael D Higgins. With voters due to cast their ballots on Thursday, there is very little time for the Labour candidate to make up the difference.
The media focus on Gallagher’s Fianna Fáil involvement and his sometimes controversial business dealings does not seem to have dented his lead but these issues could still influence voters in the last few days of the campaign.
The publicity surrounding Gallagher’s role in Fianna Fáil has actually helped him over the past two weeks as he is now getting a massive share of the Fianna Fáil vote but that is not costing him the support of voters who back other political parties.
Gallagher’s potential weakness is that he is not attracting as many transfers as Higgins but if he maintains the first-preference lead of 15 points shown in the poll, that will not ultimately matter.
However, if the gap narrows to less than five points by polling day then the ability of the Labour candidate to attract more second preferences could yet prove decisive.
In regional terms, Gallagher is strongest in Connacht-Ulster where he is getting more than twice the support of Higgins and his lead is almost as strong in the rest of Leinster. His lead is a bit narrower in Munster but still comfortable but in Dublin, Higgins has a slight lead.
Gallagher is ahead of Higgins in every social class and in every age group, apart from the over-65s.
In party terms, he gets more than half of the Fianna Fáil vote but he also does well among supporters of other parties. Far more Fine Gael voters are now backing Gallagher than the party’s candidate Gay Mitchell.
He is even well ahead of Higgins among Fine Gael voters.
Higgins is the favoured candidate of Labour voters but his lead over Gallagher even among this group is quite small, with 42 per cent backing their own candidate and 38 per cent supporting Gallagher.
Higgins will need to do far better among Labour voters and improve his standing among Fine Gael voters if he is to have any chance of closing the gap.
So far the electorate has proved almost immune to appeals by the two Government parties to their own supporters. Voters are clearly making a big distinction between the parties they support and the kind of person they want to see occupying the office of president.
In class terms, Higgins is strongest among the best-off AB voters and weakest among farmers. His problem is that he is not picking up the required level of support among lower middle- class and working-class voters that is needed to propel him into contention.
An interesting feature of the poll is that there is no difference between the voting intentions of those who say they are certain to vote and those who are less certain about turning out on Thursday.
The election has turned into a two-way contest by contrast with the first Irish Times poll on October 5th which showed a three-way tussle for the lead.
Sinn Féin candidate Martin McGuinness has dropped back since the first poll and is now well behind the leaders on 15 per cent.
That is still considerably better than the 9.9 per cent of the vote achieved by Sinn Féin in the general election last February but it is not the kind of breakthrough required to put him into contention for the presidency.
The sustained focus on his IRA record has done McGuinness some damage, as has the fact that Gallagher has emerged as the favoured candidate of voters who support Independents and smaller parties.
Sinn Féin supporters are the bedrock of McGuinness’s voting strength. With the backing of 74 per cent of them, he is attracting a far higher level of support from his own party’s voters than any of the other candidates are getting from theirs.
Outside the party ranks it is a different story, with McGuinness getting very low levels of support. Just 11 per cent of Fianna Fáil voters and 4 per cent of Labour voters are supporting him. There is also a striking difference in the attraction of McGuinness for male and female voters with 20 per cent of men and 10 per cent of women saying they will vote for him. This conforms to the long-standing pattern of Sinn Féin support.
David Norris, who led the field on 25 per cent in the first Irish Times poll of the campaign in July, has continued to lose support and he is now well out of contention on 8 per cent.
Even more surprising is the performance of Gay Mitchell, whose vote has collapsed since the first poll in July when he was on 21 per cent. He has now fallen to just 6 per cent despite the backing of the biggest party in the Dáil and the strong effort it has mounted to canvass support for him. The selection of Mitchell ahead of Pat Cox and Mairéad McGuinness was clearly a bad mistake for which the Fine Gael parliamentary party has only itself to blame. The political misjudgment involved could come back to haunt the party in the months and years ahead when strong nerves will be needed to support some very difficult budgetary decisions.
The slump in support for Mary Davis has come about in tandem with Gallaher’s rise. Her campaign never caught fire and she has not recovered from taunts about her role as “the quango queen” during the Bertie Ahern years.
Dana Rosemary Scallon is also at the rear of the field on 3 per cent. She never really had a chance and the controversy surrounding her family issues put paid to any chance she had of even getting to the 12.5 per cent of the vote required to recover her election expenses.
For all the candidates outside the leading two, that target is now the important one as a means of salvaging something from the campaign. At this stage McGuinness is the only one of the bottom five who looks likely to achieve it.
