Fine Gael And Sinn Féin Jostle For Second Place In New Poll?

In recent years I’ve tended to treat many of the more headline-making figures from polling by the Sunday Times/Behaviour & Attitudes survey with a fair degree of caution given some of the ongoing arguments over its methodologies and weighting practices. And sure enough the first poll of the 2020 general election campaign has thrown up some eyebrow-raising results. According to interviews carried out with 923 voters between January 2nd and January 14th, Fianna Fáil is on a suspiciously poll-topping 32%, Fine Gael on a shockingly low 20%, Sinn Féin on a rather too respectable 19%, and the rest are left way behind. The full stats, with a 3.3% margin-of-error, are as follows:

Fianna Fáil 32% (+5%)
Fine Gael 20% (-7%)
Sinn Féin 19% (-1%)
Greens 7% (+1%)
Labour 4% (-2%)
Independent Alliance 3% (+1%)
Solidarity-PBP 2% (-1%)
Social Democrats 1% (NC)
Renua 1% (+1%)
Independents & Others 10% (+1)

As the Sunday Times notes, the polling took place during the height of the public backlash against the Government’s planned commemoration of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police, with the politically eccentric obsession of the Minister of Justice Charlie Flanagan and a handful of others in his party bolstering Fianna Fáil at the expense of Fine Gael.

What will be more interesting to see will be the forthcoming polls by Red C and Irish Times MRBI which are likely to factor in a number of recent events, including the cartel-like murder and dismemberment of the teenage boy Keane Mulready-Woods by seemingly immune narco-terrorists waging indiscriminate vendettas in Dublin and Louth, with Leo Varadkar’s tepid response to the horrific death of the young petty criminal from Drogheda being particularly troubling, coupled with the “life-altering” injuries inflicted on a homeless man in Dublin City. Which also drew a less than sympathetic response from the Fine Gael leader and his Cabinet colleagues. Not to mention Sinn Féin having to deal with one of its own up-and-coming representatives gong very much off-script at the most inopportune of times and with some rather repugnant views of his own.