More than half of voters – 53 per cent – made up their minds on who they would cast their ballot for during the election campaign, with the decision of almost a third coming in the last couple of days or on polling day itself.
The results demonstrate the importance of the campaign period in Irish elections, with many voters yet to make their final decision in the weeks leading up to polling day.
The results mirror the 2020 exit poll, when 52 per cent of people made up their minds over the course of the campaign.
Some 23 per cent of respondents to Friday’s Irish Times/RTÉ/TG4/TCD exit poll said they made their decision during the election campaign.
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More than half of voters made up their minds during election campaign, according to exit poll
Another 19 per cent made up their minds “in last couple of days”, while 11 per cent said they decided on election day.
The remainder – 47 per cent – made up their minds before the election or always knew who they were voting for.
Some 70 per cent of people who gave their first preference vote to the Social Democrats made up their mind at some point during the campaign, indicating that it had a good election race.
Sinn Féin had the highest proportion of supporters who either knew before the election or always knew they would vote for the party, at 57 per cent.
The corresponding figures for the other two big parties was Fine Gael (52 per cent) and Fianna Fáil (46 per cent).
Voters were also asked about the trustworthiness of politicians. More than half, 53 per cent, said their view is most politicians are trustworthy. More men (56 per cent) than women (51 per cent) were of this opinion.
Some 45 per cent of the respondents said most politicians are untrustworthy.
The highest level of trust in politicians was to be found among Green Party supporters with 78 per cent of these saying most politicians are trustworthy. The same answer was given by 73 per cent of Fine Gael voters and 66 per cent of Fianna Fáil supporters.
In terms of those who expressed the view that most politicians are untrustworthy, 68 per cent of Aontú voters responded in this way as did 67 per cent of Sinn Féin supporters.
People were also asked about what they mainly used to help them form their opinion before voting.
Twenty-five per cent of respondents said it was TV programmes, while the next highest figure, 13 per cent, said social media or online messaging.
Eleven per cent said online news sites like irishtimes.com, rte.ie or thejournal.ie while another 11 per cent said national radio and a further 11 per cent said local radio.
National printed newspapers stood at 4 per cent and local newspapers were on 2 per cent.
Podcasts were also on 2 per cent, while 18 per cent of respondents said “something else” helped them to form their opinion before voting.
A third of Fianna Fáil voters surveyed – 33 per cent – cited TV coverage as what they mainly used to help form their opinion. The corresponding figure for Fine Gael voters was 31 per cent and it was 24 per cent for people who gave Sinn Féin their first preference vote.
Independent Ireland voters reported the highest level of reliance on social media to help form their opinion – 41 per cent followed by People Before Profit-Solidarity (27 per cent), ‘other party’ (25 per cent), Sinn Féin (20 per cent), the Social Democrats (17 per cent) and the Labour Party (15 per cent).
The figures for those mainly using social media to help form their opinion among voters for the Coalition parties was Fianna Fáil (7 per cent), the Green Party (6 per cent) and Fine Gael (5 per cent).
According to the exit poll, social media was the main form of media helping form the opinions of 18 to 24-year-old voters with 37 per cent of respondents in the age category reporting this.
This compares to just 2 per cent among the over 65s and 6 per cent in the 50 to 64 age categories for whom TV programmes were the main response to this question.
The poll, which is a joint project of The Irish Times, RTÉ, TG4 and the Political Science Department of Trinity College Dublin, was conducted by Ipsos B&A among 5018 voters as they left 253 polling stations across all 43 constituencies yesterday.
All respondents were asked about how they voted and then a series of other questions, the results of which will be released throughout this morning.
To provide as many questions as possible, the sample was divided by four and each quarter – about 1,250 people – was asked different questions. This is the same size as a nationally representative poll as conducted normally for The Irish Times by Ipsos B&A. The margin of error is about 3 per cent.
EXIT POLL: What do the results mean for government formation?
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