No rollout bounce for FF as SF lead increases

SINN FéIN has opened up a politically significant lead over Fine Gael, a new Irish Mail on Sunday Ireland Thinks Mail poll reveals.

Support for the main opposition party has climbed to 30%, courtesy of a three-point bounce from the last opinion poll.

Sinn Féin now enjoys a five-point lead over Fine Gael in the race between the new ‘big two’ in Irish politics. Despite an increasingly successful vaccine rollout, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil dropped by one percentage point to 25% and 15% respectively.

The result will come as a blow to Micheál Martin. Despite the key role of Mr Martin and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly in fronting up the rollout, the party’s support has actually dropped.

The Greens remain perilously positioned at 3% (no change) and embarrassingly now find themselves behind Peadar Toibin’s Aontú (4%) for the second month running.

Worryingly, for the Government parties, the poll suggests there has been no ‘vaccine bounce’ for the Coalition.

This is despite a separate survey that indicates high levels of confidence and support in the vaccine rollout.

However, as the public’s attention is increasingly drawn to the chaos in housing, the two main parties have actually witnessed a loss in support. The result is likely to increase tensions within Fianna Fáil as concern grows that it is poised to suffer a similar fate to Labour, courtesy of its feared status as the Government mudguard.

Tension is also likely to escalate within the Greens as, under the leadership of Eamon Ryan, the party continues to stagnate at the aforementioned 3%.

Unease is also likely to intensify within Fine Gael over the electoral attractiveness of Leo Varadkar.

Outside of Sinn Féin, the happiest party will be the Social Democrats (7%) who have opened a significant three-point lead over Labour.

Despite the energetic leadership of Alan Kelly, the latter party dropped by one percentage point and remains mired at 4%.

Independents retained their

previous support levels of 10%, while the unchanged 3% secured by Solidarity People before Profit group suggests voters, even in the middle of a pandemic, are not interested in a hard-left solution.

Intriguingly, the Sinn Féin lead allied to the rise in Social Democrat support indicates that Mary Lou McDonald may be in a position to lead an alternative left government after the next election.

More than 44% of the voters now support such an alternative.

When it comes to political ratings, Simon Harris at 4.6 is still the most popular politician.

The two alternative taoisigh – Mary Lou McDonald and Leo Varadkar – are locked together in second place while Micheál

Martin is close behind at 4.0.

Mr Martin and Ms McDonald have enjoyed slight increases of 0.2 and 0.3 respectively. In contrast, Mr Varadkar (down 0.1) and Mr Harris (down 0.2) have both fallen.

None of the seven politicians scored more than 5 out of 10.

At 3.2 (up 0.1) the position of Health Minister Stephen Donnelly appears to have stabilised but Labour will not be happy with the decline in support for Alan Kelly (down 0.3), who is now less popular than the Health Minister.

But the grisliest result is that of the Green leader Eamon Ryan who, at 2.6 (up 0.1) continues to be, like his party, dangerously detached from the herd.