For the past couple of years Fine Gael has enjoyed one of the most stable and consistent support levels of any political party in the Republic. The only time this sentence hasn’t been true is at election time - when it actually matters. So why is Fine Gael so popular with voters when it doesn’t matter, and what can the party do to avoid another collapse in support come election time?
Fine Gael polling numbers are fragile and unstable
Ahead of the 2020 General Election announcement, Fine Gael enjoyed fairly stable and high levels of support amongst the electorate. In H1 2019, Fine Gael averaged 29.3% support amongst voters across 14 different polls, and in H2 2019 that support averaged 28.3% across 10 polls. Displaying the individual results in chart format (including early 2020 poll numbers), we get the following:
What jumps out are two distinct periods of major decline (dotted in red above) - which coincide with both the announcement of GE 2020 and the run-up to the 2019 Local Election. Now while some drop in support is always expected for a government party over the course of a campaign, the drops in 2019 and 2020 for Fine Gael were far more severe than we’ve seen previously. Take a look at a similar graph for 2015 and 2016 below:
As you can see, very little movement in the numbers as Fine Gael headed into GE 2016 - support was far more stable and predictable. In real terms, when you compare actual 1st preference vote shares with pre-election support levels, Fine Gael support dropped 7.4% in GE 2020, and 5.4% in the 2019 Local Elections. Compare that to a 2.6% drop in GE 2016, and a 4.1% drop in the 2014 Local Elections, it’s clear to see that Fine Gael have a growing problem when it comes to the reliability of their support in pre-election polling.
Female voters like Fine Gael but fail to materialise on election day
Knowing that Fine Gael’s polling figures are inflated, the next question to ask is why? What is causing their poll numbers to balloon in polls outside election season? Looking through some of these pre-election polls in detail, and comparing their results with demographic exit poll data from GE 2020, we can start to see some standout discrepancies. The first of these being levels of support amongst female voters:
Female voters seem open to supporting Fine Gael, but ultimately decide against it come election time. In the polls above, female support averaged 7.9% above the eventual election result. This is obviously significant, and even more so when you consider that the equivalent drop in male support across the same polls and exit poll was only 3.1% - less than half that experienced with female voters.
Dublin and Connacht/Ulster represent best chance for seat gains
Aside from gender differences, the other major discrepancy relates to geographic location - specifically voters in Dublin and Connacht/Ulster. In both locations, the Fine Gael vote share drop was roughly twice that experienced in Leinster and Munster:
It is clear from the table above that a significant number of potential Fine Gael votes are being left on the table across Dublin and Connacht/Ulster. If Fine Gael had managed to convert support levels in Dublin and Connacht/Ulster to the same degree they did across Leinster and Munster, Fine Gael would have expected their national vote share to have been 22.6%, rather than the 20.9% actually received.
What is clear is that Fine Gael has an opportunity to exploit these gender and geographic discrepancies to solidify support amongst female, Dublin, and Connacht/Ulster based voters. These groups in particular seem predisposed to supporting the party, but ultimately drift come election time - potentially due to a lack of clear policies that are of benefit to them, or an inability to identify strongly enough with the party to deliver a 1st preference vote at the ballot box.
At the very least, developing some strategies to target these voter groups in the coming months and years would seem to make sense for a party that probably reads too much into mid-term polling and has a tendency to blame campaign gaffes when more fundamental issues are at play amongst their voter base.
Comentários