One opinion poll can be an outlier, or simply wrong. Two opinion polls is a trend.
In the space of two weeks, the two most respected pollsters in Ireland – Red C for the Sunday Business Post and MRBI for the Irish Times – have shown a substantial fall in support for Sinn Fein. Red C showed a 4% drop in support, MRBI showed a 6% drop in support. All three of the main polling companies, if you include relative newcomer Ireland Thinks, now show Sinn Fein polling below the psychologically significant 30% mark. On that, the pollsters are agreed.
What they do not agree on is where that support is going. If you believe the Red C poll, then Sinn Fein has bled support to “independents and others”, who are the group traditionally most associated with right-leaning populism, especially on immigration. Yet if you believe the Irish Times/MRBI poll, their fall in support has been associated with marked increases for the Green Party and the Social Democrats, who are on the exact opposite flank of politics. If you think that makes it hard for the average person to be certain of exactly what is going on, then just imagine the hair-pulling and nail-chewing that must be going on in Sinn Fein headquarters. It’s quite hard to win back votes when you’re not exactly sure of where they’ve gone, and why.
No doubt the more popular theory amongst Gript readers will be that Sinn Fein’s fall in support is primarily related to immigration. That theory has much to support it, but it’s always very important not simply to believe the things that you want to believe, and there are many reasons to be sceptical that what we’ll call the “immigration theory” is the correct one.
For one thing, the immigration theory is lacking one of the things – for now – that would confirm that it is true. One might argue that the polls are simply not picking it up, but for the moment there is zero evidence in public polling of a political breakthrough for one of the organised anti-immigration political groups. Parties like the Irish Freedom Party, Ireland First, and so on, are simply not registering in the opinion polls, which is something we might expect to see if those parties were on course to make a significant breakthrough at Sinn Fein’s expense. Even Aontú, which is the most immigration-sceptical of those parties currently represented in the Dáil, has not had any statistically significant increase in support as immigration increases in importance as an issue.
This is not to say that a breakthrough for those movements will not happen – for all we know one of these groups could end up winning 20 or 30 council seats nationally. It is simply to say that for now this is a piece of evidence that the immigration theory is lacking.
What we can probably theorise is that immigration is hurting Sinn Fein either way, because the party is in a bit of a bind: Whichever way it moves on that topic, it risks losing support.
The other theory, the “lefty anger” theory for want of a better word, goes like this: As Sinn Fein moves to be incrementally but only very slightly more populist on immigration, a lot of hard left voters previously attracted to the idea of a left Government are jumping ship and heading back to parties that are much purer when it comes to their leftism. This would explain the increase in votes for the Greens and the Social Democrats in the MRBI poll. If you want someone to “fight the fash”, you’re likely to get that more from Holly Cairns and Roderic O’Gorman than you are from Mary Lou, who seems much more understanding of “the fash” these days, not least because she represents Dublin Central.
This, I would argue, is the real problem facing Sinn Fein: It’s that as the electorate becomes more polarised on immigration, the party risks losing support from one side or the other. Populist, nationalist working class voters sick of being tarred as “far right” will demand a harder line against immigration on the one hand, while ideological left-leaning voters will demand a harder line against the so-called “far right” on the other. On both flanks, there will be louder and angrier parties ready and willing to accommodate refugees – there’s an irony – from Sinn Fein.
To figure out which is the bigger risk, Sinn Fein has one massive advantage over its competitors: Unlike FF or FG, it can still claim to have a massive on-the-ground organisation of door-knockers and activists who can feed back real-world feedback from the doorsteps to party headquarters. Those canvasses, especially in areas where the party expects to make gains, will be critical to understanding exactly why it is losing votes, and who it is losing them to.
What’s clear, I think, is that the present line on immigration – broadly tracking the Government and issuing the occasional soothing statement about local concerns – is not really going to cut it, if the party wants to look like the frontrunner for Government after the local and European elections. Which way Sinn Fein jumps will tell us a lot about the party, and it will also tell us a lot about what it’s hearing on the doorsteps.
In the meantime, opponents on either flank smell blood, and will continue to apply the pressure. Sinn Fein’s strategists are going to be well worth the money, if the party can get out of this pickle.