I can’t read the poll today in the Sunday Business Post where the margin for the YES side in Lisbon has widened without wondering whether the Chairman has made another of his now legendary errors. For the details surely can not give him any confidence that his reappearance is either a sure thing or even a half sure thing.
The results show support for Lisbon holding up, with 52% of adults saying they will vote for the Treaty, 25% saying they will vote against and 23% are undecided.
Bad enough for him, one might think. But…
When the don’t knows are excluded, the Yes side leads by 67% to 33 – a two to one margin.
And worse still…
Red C also asked people whether they are likely to vote, and among those most likely to go to the polls on 2 October, the Yes side is even further ahead, by 73% 27%, once the undecideds are excluded.
As regards the campaign more broadly, well, surely, too soon to tell, but clearly, as RTÉ notes this campaign isn’t following the progress of the first. The amended figures seem more nearly close to the second Nice referendum where the final percentages were YES 62.89% and NO 37.11%. Problem is how accurate are those figures?
And as against last time out?
The Yes side’s two to one lead among all voters is a much stronger position than in the first Lisbon Referendum campaign when with three weeks to go then, Red C showed the two sides much closer, with the Yes side ahead by just 56% to 43%.
Probably no harm, for the YES side, they’re keeping FF and Cowen in particular well out of the spot-light. And perhaps an indication of the hill the NO side still has to climb – Ganley or no. That said it still remains tight, as indeed the previous Irish Times poll suggested. Opportunities for all, and no room for complacency.
Still, a further thought. One wonders had the economy not crashed so comprehensively would we being seeing a much much softer YES side? If one looks back the current NO vote rating is still on the high side even in historical terms. Before that in the sunny uplands of the Irish love affair with the EU? Well, intriguingly consider the Treaty of Amsterdam referendum in 1998 with a YES vote of 61.74% and a NO vote of 38.26%. Indeed Maastricht was the last EC (as it was then) referendum to achieve over two-thirds satisfaction… with a YES vote of 69.05% and a NO vote of 30.95%. Something clearly fractured in the mid 1990s, even if the ramifications weren’t completely evident until Nice. I guess the most obvious answer might be a rising economic tide which then tapped into concepts of a self-sufficiency… but perhaps there are other more credible explanations.
Meanwhile, I wonder if Patricia McKenna’s comment as reported in the Irish Times and the reappearance of the Chairman is absolutely correct?
People’s Movement spokeswoman Patricia McKenna said: “It would appear that as a successful businessman Mr Ganley could not stand idly by and allow the Irish people, who are genuinely concerned about their economic future, be coerced into accepting something that is not in their interest out of fear.
“The return to the Lisbon debate of Mr Ganley, who comes from the same big business world as Michael O’Leary and his ilk, will place serious question marks over the unequivocal support that some elements of big business have given to Lisbon.”
Or rather, is that a helpful interpretation? The idea that ‘big business’ as a seamless whole is behind the YES is as unlikely to me as the idea that organised Labour is entirely behind the NO side. But from the point of view of the NO campaign I suspect it makes for better copy if the former idea is put around. It draws the lines of battle a little bit more starkly, so to speak.
And surely she doesn’t want wobbles on the part of the likes of O’Leary et al who for some would provide as good a reason as any as voting NO on the day.
Details gleaned from the RTÉ website because the SBP doesn’t itself go live until later in the day.
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