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Approval ratings for the government and all top party leaders have fallen, according to the latest Irish Times / Ipsos MRBI opinion poll, as the pandemic affects the public’s mood.
The Green Party has also seen its support decimated since it entered government, falling by eight points to just four percent since the last poll, conducted in June before the party formed the coalition with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan’s satisfaction rating drops 13 points from 40% to 27%.
However, support for the other two parties in the coalition remains, with Fianna Fáil gaining three points to 17 percent and Fine Gael marginally falling two points to 35 percent.
There’s better news for Sinn Féin, which sees its support rise by four points to 29%, continuing the surge in support brought by its remarkable result in the February general election.
The comparisons are to the latest Irish Times / Ipsos MRBI survey conducted in June this year, just before the change of government.
The numbers see the high approval ratings enjoyed by the last government replaced by more mundane results.
Government satisfaction has fallen from the 72 percent enjoyed by the outgoing minority administration led by Fine Gael in June to 48 percent today, a level still high judging by trends previously evident in this series.
The approval rating of the Taoiseach Micheál Martin falls from 46% in June (when he was leader of the opposition) to 39% today. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar sees his approval rating drop 10 points to 65 percent, while Mary Lou McDonald’s rating drops marginally three points from 49 to 46 percent.
I support the party, according to the latest Irish Times / Ipsos MRBI opinion poll. Graphic: Paul Scott / The Irish Times
The Labor Party’s rating has doubled from 2 percent in June to 4 percent, returning to the level of the February general election.
The status of the parties, when undecided and unlikely voters are excluded, is as follows: Fine Gael at 35 percent (two less), Sinn Féin at 29 percent (four more), Fianna Fáil at 17 percent (an increase of three), the Greens at 4 percent (down eight percent), Labor at 4 percent (an increase of two) and the Independents and small parties are at 11 percent (an increase of one).
Among the smaller parties, Solidarity-People before earnings are at 1 percent (one more), the Social Democrats at 2 percent (no change) and independents at 8 percent (one more).
Undecided voters are at 18 percent, two percent more than in June.
But while government satisfaction has plummeted since June, there is some encouragement for the coalition.
A small majority of voters who expressed an opinion believe that the country is “generally going in the right direction” with 45% of voters expressing this opinion, while 41% believe that the country is going in the wrong direction, a indicator generally considered to be closely related to the destiny of a government in office.
Forty percent of voters agree that the government has made some progress and “deserves to be allowed to continue its work.”
Less than a third (31 percent) agree that “not enough progress is being made and it is time for a change”, while 23 percent say it is time for “a radical change in direction.”
This represents a 21 percent reduction in voters wanting a change from the last time this series of polls asked the question before the January general election. The survey was conducted between Saturday, October 3 and Tuesday, October 6 through in-home interviews of 1,200 adults at 120 locations in each district.
The level of precision is estimated to be plus or minus 2.8 percent. The latest survey saw a return to the usual face-to-face methodology, after the June survey was conducted via telephone interviews due to the pandemic.
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