The prime minister Simon Harris’ centre-right Fine Gael, the front-runner in Ireland’s election contest, has fallen in polls ahead of Friday’s vote, indicating a close finish.
An Irish Times/Ipsos poll on Monday showed Fine Gael had dropped 6%, while a Sunday Independent poll conducted over the weekend showed a 4% decline.
Along with its departing coalition allies Fianna Fail, also from the centre-right, the party, which has been in power since 2010, entered the November 6 campaign heavily favoured for a simple return to power.
However, blunders and gaffes have marred Fine Gael’s campaign, such as a widely shared video last Friday that painted Harris, 38, as callous and contemptuous.
A worker in the disability sector was abandoned by social media savvy Harris, who succeeded predecessor Leo Varadkar as leader in April of last year and oversaw a strong turnaround in his party’s ratings.
Over 2.5 million people have viewed the video. The next day, Harris apologised to the employee.
Fine Gael has fallen to third position (19 percent) in Monday’s poll, behind leftist-nationalist Sinn Fein (20 percent) and Fianna Fail (21 percent), which is led by Michael Martin.
Before seeing a sharp decline in support this year, primarily due to its immigration policies, Sinn Fein, a pro-Irish unity party, had the greatest vote share in the most recent election in 2020 and was predicted to win in 2024.
Large spikes in asylum applications are escalating already-existing tensions about a shortage of reasonably priced accommodation.
If elected, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, who might become Ireland’s first female prime minister, has promised to hold a referendum on Irish unity by 2030.
Prior to a peace agreement in 1998, the paramilitary IRA, which was engaged in three decades of sectarian bloodshed against British rule in Northern Ireland, had this party as its political wing.
