Presidential elections have seen dramatic late swings before. But it would take an earthquake now for Catherine Connolly to be denied victory in next week’s vote, Thursday’s Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll suggests.
Thursday’s poll is the first of the campaign for which the sampling was conducted entirely after the dramatic departure of the Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin from the race.
And it is clear from these numbers that Gavin’s exit from the campaign – though he remains, of course, on the ballot paper – has not delivered for Heather Humphreys in anything like the way that she might have hoped.
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In fact, the reduction of the campaign to a two-horse race has worked rather better for Connolly, who now stands on the threshold of a stunning victory that was scarcely imaginable when she entered the campaign, the first in the field, as an Independent back in July.
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In 2011, with a 12-point lead going into the last week, businessman Seán Gallagher saw the presidency snatched from him by Michael D Higgins in the final days after false claims on an RTÉ television debate for which the station later apologised and paid damages.
POLL: Catherine Connolly opens huge lead
Had the RTÉ programme not aired, or been better managed, or had Gallagher dealt differently with questions about fundraising for Fianna Fáil, he might now be finishing up his second term in Áras an Uachtaráin.
Forewarned by Gallagher’s fate, Connolly will now become the cautious candidate, taking no risks and seeking merely to keep her campaign on an even keel.
Humphreys, by contrast, needs something to change and change big – she can now throw caution to the wind and is likely to become more strident in questions to her opponent.
This is the first and only Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll of the campaign. There have been others in recent weeks, all of which have shown Connolly with a significant lead – but none as big as Thursday’s.
The hope in the Humphreys campaign was that the withdrawal of Gavin would bring their candidate to within striking distance of Connolly and that a natural narrowing of the race and differential turnout rates could push them ahead.
Instead, the gap has widened. It’s 18 points on Thursday, with barely a week to go.
Even by the standards of presidential elections, something extraordinary would have to happen to overturn that lead. If these numbers – or anything like them – are repeated on election day, Connolly will win on the first count.
Strip out the don’t knows, those who won’t vote and the vote spoilers and Connolly hits 60 per cent.
Connolly’s campaign has won support across the board, but she is – unsurprisingly – especially popular among younger voters. Among the under-34s (again excluding undecideds, non-voters and spoilers) she is in the mid-70s. It’s hard to lose with these kinds of numbers.
The one potential concern for Connolly might be the question of turnout. Older voters are more reliable voters and although younger voters declare firm intentions in Thursday’s poll to turn up for Connolly, the record says their turnout rates are lower. In addition, conventional wisdom says that the race should tighten as polling day approaches.
But there is no sign of that on Thursday – the opposite, in fact – and the boost to Connolly’s momentum delivered by these numbers could see the gap widen instead of going the other way. Humphreys voters will hardly be encouraged.
Is there any hope for the Fine Gael candidate?
If there is, it rests in a few things: that the poll exaggerates Connolly’s support; that her own supporters are galvanised to come out in greater numbers; that the warnings of a left-wing, anti-American and anti-EU Connolly presidency is enough to scare centrist voters into the polling booths for Humphreys.
All of those things individually are not implausible. But it is very unlikely that they all happen together – and with sufficient intensity to overturn the Connolly lead. It’s not impossible. But it is very unlikely.
As American journalist Damon Runyon said: “The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong. But that’s the way to bet.”
There is one more important thing to be said about today’s results. They show clearly that a sizeable chunk of voters have been alienated from this election. Nearly half of all voters don’t feel that they are represented by any of the candidates; more than half (55 per cent) want it to be easier to get into the race.
These questions are not solely about Maria Steen, but she looms large over them. And 45 per cent of respondents, a large majority of those who expressed a preference, believe she should have been facilitated to run. For sure, it would have been a very different election had she been on the ballot paper.
The first half of this campaign seemed to be about the people who weren’t in it; the second half has sometimes seemed to be all about Catherine Connolly.
