Ambitions of Sinn Féin party to govern Ireland and push for reunification with Northern Ireland will face potential challenges in local and European elections on Friday amid falling support.
The former political wing of the Irish Republican Army has seen a huge and almost three-year unbroken lead disappear almost completely in the latest polls. The fall in popularity is largely due to the housing and immigration crises.
The latest poll put Sinn Féin (GUE/NGL) and the more moderate Fine Gael (EPP) of Prime Minister Simon Harris on 22 per cent. This represents a 7 point drop in less than a month. Meanwhile, Harris’s main coalition partner Fianna Fáil (ALDE) got 17 per cent.
Ireland’s large bloc of independent candidates, many of whom have taken the hardest line on migration, again contributed to Sinn Féin’s decline. In Sunday’s poll, the party’s support stood at 23 per cent. Kevin Cunningham, a lecturer in politics at TU Dublin, stated:
Based on the current numbers, I think Sinn Féin’s chances of leading the next government look pretty slim.
Sinn Féin’s challenge is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil want to govern together again without it. A Sinn Féin-led government would therefore reinforce the party’s main aim of holding a referendum on unification with Northern Ireland.
An Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll last month showed that Sinn Féin supporters took the toughest stance on immigration. 70 per cent want to see tightened border policies and support for new deportations.
However, Eoin O’Broin, Sinn Féin’s spokesman for housing, stated that immigration issue was “nowhere near the top of the list of issues.” He also warned against focusing too much on local and European opinion polls.
This will give us a temperature gauge but only a temperature gauge, and anybody who is either saying something is inevitable or unlikely this far out from a general election I think is foolish.
Meanwhile, political analysts believe the party can still regain its chances of winning, as it has done in the past.
