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Housing is the top issue for voters, especially those aged 25-34

Almost nine out of 10 voters who mention housing have a negative view of the Government’s efforts

Pat Leahy
Mon Apr 29 2024 - 06:00

Housing has returned to the top of the list of issues that voters are noticing about the Government’s performance once again this month.

The April Ipsos Snapshot for The Irish Times shows that after a period in which housing was supplanted first by immigration and then by last month’s referendums, housing is once again the issue most often mentioned by voters when asked what they have noticed about what the Government is doing.

Over one fifth (21 per cent) of voters named housing when they are asked what they had noticed about what the Government has done in the last month, and whether they thought it pushed the country in the right or wrong direction.

The monthly survey seeks to gauge what voters are noticing about what the Government is doing and what their general perception of those efforts is.

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The series confirms that housing is the issue at the top of their minds – today, for the eighth month out of 10 in which the survey has been completed, housing is the top issue.

The enduring strength of the housing issue in surveys – which have been conducted by Ipsos every month since last summer and have appeared on the last Monday of every month in The Irish Times since January of this year – suggests that its prominence as a political issue will remain undimmed as the general election approaches.

Worryingly for the Government there has been little indication that the public feel it is getting on top of the issue. Almost nine out of 10 voters (88 per cent) who mention housing have a negative view of the Government’s efforts. Most concerned about housing are those in the 25-34 age cohort, where 28 per cent say housing is the thing they have noticed in the last month.

The other enduring issue signalled by the survey is immigration, which is cited as noticed by 12 per cent of respondents, though this represents a slight decline of two points from last month.

Though prominent in people’s perceptions, immigration has declined from earlier this year when almost a quarter of people were citing it as the issue they had noticed most.

As with housing the perception of the Government’s performance is mostly negative – 76 per cent of comments made to researchers were negative.

The change in the Taoiseach’s office – with the elevation of Simon Harris to the role and the resignation of Leo Varadkar – made a limited impact on the consciousness of most voters. Just 7 per cent cited it as the thing they noticed most, with 62 per cent of those comments negative and 35 per cent positive. The finding demonstrates the relative lack of interest among the public about which politician does what job – as opposed to how they do it.

The new survey asks more than 1,000 respondents the following question: “What have you come across in what the Government has said or done recently that has made you think the country is going in the right or wrong direction?”

Their responses are then collated and sorted by issue and whether they view the Government in a positive or negative light as a result. A selection of their verbatim responses is also carried in today’s Irish Times.

The data was collected using Omnipoll, Ipsos’s telephone omnibus survey which interviews a fresh, nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 15-plus every two weeks. The sample used includes both mobile and landline phone numbers. The data for today’s report was collected between April 2nd and 12th.

Pat Leahy

Pat Leahy

Pat Leahy is Political Editor of The Irish Times