InsidePolitics:The clear gulf between Fianna Fáil voters and supporters of all other parties on the issue of Bertie Ahern's personal finances is highlighted in the latest Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll.
Put in a nutshell, the issue has become a huge liability for the Taoiseach with non-Fianna Fáil voters but the party faithful has remained as loyal as ever.
Whether this is because most Fianna Fáil voters simply don't have a problem with the issues involved in the controversy, or because they adhere to the party's supreme value of loyalty, is impossible to say. One way or another the response marks a boundary in the community between two very different approaches to politics.
A striking illustration of Fianna Fáil attitudes is that well over half of the party's voters don't believe Ahern has given the full picture about his personal finances and tax liabilities. Nonetheless, a whopping 77 per cent of them do not think he should resign over the issue.
In fact, almost two-thirds of Fianna Fáil voters would like to see him lead the party into the next election despite his own strong hint that he has no intention of doing so.
By contrast a majority of supporters of all other parties think the Taoiseach should resign now and they certainly do not believe he should lead his party into the next election. This view is held not only by Fine Gael and Labour voters but by a majority of Greens and Progressive Democrats voters as well. Remarkably, the majority of those who support both smaller parties in the Coalition express dissatisfaction with the Taoiseach and also with the Government.
The paradox about the Coalition is that issue of standards in public life has always been a core value for the Greens and the PDs. Yet the Green Ministers now proclaim that the issue of standards in any other party, even one they are sharing power with in Government, is none of their business. The PDs have not adopted this policy officially but have effectively taken the same attitude.
The poll demonstrates that the supporters of both parties have still not made the same leap as their leaders but that has not prompted them to change party allegiance, for the present at least. In time, though, the disconnect between the supporters of the smaller Coalition parties and Fianna Fáil could impact on the stability of the Government. If the small parties begin to lose support, then their TDs might be pushed into taking a more aggressive line. For the moment, though, both the Greens and PDs seem content their vote has gone up rather than down since the last poll and appear determined to avoid trouble with Fianna Fáil at all costs.
Fianna Fáil has expressed satisfaction about the party's standing in the poll and cited it as evidence that the public finds the attacks on Ahern by Opposition leaders off-putting. The findings in relation to the Taoiseach do not bear this out as far as the non-Fianna Fáil segment of the electorate is concerned.
Even in relation to party support, Fianna Fáil has nothing to be complacent about. It is true that the party has increased its level of support by one point since the last Irish Times poll at the end of October, but it should be remembered that that poll revealed a precipitous nine-point drop in support since the election in May.
What should be of particular concern to the party is that its vote in Dublin at 27 per cent is still 12 points lower than that achieved in the election last May. The level of dissatisfaction with the Taoiseach and the Government in the capital is much more pronounced than in other regions, so the party has a real problem to contend with.
As for the Opposition, Fine Gael has expressed delight that it has held on to the 31 per cent support it achieved in the last poll. Remember, though, that the first Irish Times poll of the last election campaign also put the party on that figure but it ended up on 27 per cent when the going got tough.
Still, getting 31 per cent in two polls in a row for the first time since the 1980s is a morale booster even if Fine Gael must now be rueing the failure of nerve that led it to back away from a full-frontal attack on Ahern over his personal finances when the issue first surfaced in October 2006.
For Labour, though, the poll result is disappointing, particularly in light of the post-election surge it experienced in October. On the positive side the latest poll showing of 12 per cent is still up two points on the election result and Eamon Gilmore's significantly improved rating gives the party a base on which to build.
For Sinn Féin the poll will come as a relief. It appears that just as most pundits grossly overestimated the party's likely impact in the general election they have overestimated the impact of the election failure on the party. If the party can hold on to the 8 per cent revealed in the poll it will almost certainly gain more seats in the local elections next year.
In the past few local elections Sinn Féin has done well in areas where it has outpolled the Greens and the reverse is also true. The two parties are neck-and-neck in Dublin and that is where the main battleground between them will be. They now have more than a year to prepare for the local elections and the contest will be critical for both of them.
The other contest next year will be the European election and here both Sinn Féin and the Greens will struggle to win a seat. The reduction of Dublin to a three-seater will put the seat held by Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald under extreme pressure although it is virtually impossible to say at this stage who will emerge from the dog-fight in the capital.
The bottom line is that there is some good news for all the parties in the poll, but what it tells us about the polarisation of the electorate on the issue of standards in office is probably its most interesting finding.