Wednesday, May 23, 2007

INSIDE POLITICS - MORATORIUM

Parties did little today. Only two official press briefings. All the politicians returned to their own constituencies.

Red C and the Sunday Business Post published an eve of election poll, which was sampled on Monday and Tuesday. It's up on the Red C website.

Shows that FF have risen since their poll on Sunday (but aren't as high here as they were in the TNS mrbi poll). Labour and Fine Gael - and the PDs - will all take some positives from it. It's where many commentators and observers sense the parties are at. On this basis, the outcome will go down to the wire...

There are two intriguing findings. One shows that people, when asked, now think the FF-PD combination is a marginally better one; reversing the situation on May 13.

More interesting is the finding that shows that the uppage in Fianna Fail's support coincided almost exactly with the fall in the number of undecideds. It seems that most of those who were undecided have decided in the past week (Westminster? The TV debate? Continuity? Doubt abut the wherewithal of the others?) to throw in their lot with the Bertie Bunch.

The Greens might also be worried by a little dip. Equally the PDs will take a crumb of comfort that they have crept up by a point.

John Gormley issued a statement last night saying that the last seat in Dublin South East was going to be a fight between him and Michael McDowell. Last minute shivers down the spine or is this constituency going to surprise us again.

I've got it in the neck all week for predicting that FF won't take a seat on The Week in Politics last Sunday. Maybe I concentrated too much on the failure of both the FF candidates to win council seats. I met Eoin Ryan in the Leinster House car park and he tackled me over it - saying that you can't argue against 1.2 quotes.

"There's always a FF seat in Dublin South East"


A mature recollection moment for me? Possibly. Sure, we are all fallible!

Here is the State of parties: (compared to last Sunday)

Fianna Fail 38 (+2)
Fine Gael 26 (-1_
Labour 11 (-)
Sinn Fein 9 (-1)
Greens 6 (-2)
PD 3 (+1)
Others 7 (+1)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You were totally wrong about DSE, Harry. Fianna Fail will definitely win a seat. Chris Andrews has put in an amazing campaign. He will be a TD in the next 24 hours.

Anonymous said...

FF 40% FG 26% Lab 10% SF 10% Green 8% PDs 1% Others 5%. That's the way it's going to be today. Sorry Enda baby!

Unknown said...

Harry, I think you're right about DSE.

David Forsythe said...

Harry,

You have Bernard Allen down as Bernard Durkan in your constituency profile for Cork North Central :)

Harry McGee said...

Ooops. And I know Bernard Allen really well. That appeared in the paper a fortnight ago and you are the first to point out such a big blunder. Thanks. We don'g have the monopoly on wisdom though we do seem to have the monopoly on words!