Coalition’s bitter pill as SF leads despite vaccines

THE Government parties have been given little thanks by voters for what is perceived as a successful handling of the pandemic.

Sinn Féin has solidified its position as the party favoured by most voters in the latest Ireland Thinks/ Irish Mail On Sunday poll.

The party is on 32%, up two percentage points since the previous poll in May.

This opens a substantial eightpoint lead over its nearest rival, Fine Gael.

The irony for the Government is that while the poll findings clearly show great confidence among the public in the Coalition’s handling of the pandemic, this is not reflected in the poll numbers.

A total 55% said they were confident in the Government’s ability to tackle the pandemic. And 35% of respondents said they did not have confidence while 10% answered ‘Don’t Know’.

Of those polled, 56% thought the management of the vaccine rollout was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

A rating of ‘average’ was given by 27%, while 16% described management of the vaccine as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.

There was some consolation for the Government parties in that they have not lost ground collectively.

Fine Gael dropped one percentage point in the June poll to 24%, while Fianna Fáil stayed static at 15%.

The Green Party remains unchanged from the previous Ireland Thinks poll, conducted in May, with 3% of voters declaring it their favoured party.

The Government’s failure to win support comes despite a 3% fall in the number of people declaring no confidence in its ability to tackle the pandemic.

The Social Democrats are down two points on last month, dropping from 7% to 5%, a statistic that’s bound to worry Sarah Durcan who is running for the party in the Dublin Bay South by-election.

Aontú’s standing remained at 4%, the same as last month.

The latest poll was conducted yesterday with a sample size of 1,274 people.

A poll conducted by the MoS last month found that the housing crisis has surpassed Covid-19 as the most important issue among voters.

This was a dramatic jump of 28 percentage points from the 6% of voters who said housing was the most important issue in the April poll.

In March the figure was even lower, at 4%.

This month an overwhelming 79% of those polled said the housing crisis could be solved. Only 6% said it couldn’t and 15% said they didn’t know.

On antigen testing, 44% said the public could be trusted to use the tests, 37% said no they couldn’t and 19% didn’t know.