The intensive campaigning by the new Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who has risked his political honeymoon on the success of the referendum, is bearing fruit with Fianna Fáil voters who now favour the treaty by a huge margin. For the first time, an absolute majority of Fianna Fáil voters say they will support the treaty.
However, despite an active Fine Gael campaign and the appeal by party leader Enda Kenny to ‘‘put the country first’’, Fine Gael voters are evenly divided between the Yes and No side. This may be explained by many voters identifying the referendum as a proposal from the government and, therefore, something to be opposed.
They may also be turned off by exactly what is enthusing Fianna Fáil voters - a desire to back Cowen in his first test as Taoiseach. Whatever the reason, the Fine Gael campaign is failing, as yet, to convince its own voters. The party’s postering campaign - dedicated to promoting party figures who are calling for a Yes vote - isn’t bringing it out. Not yet, anyway.
This illustrates a deeper flaw in such a politically-based campaign. All parties believe that if they can get ‘‘their’’ voters out, the proposal will be passed. And it’s certainly true that if voters followed the requests of the parties they voted for at the general election, the proposal would be passed by a massive majority.
But fewer voters nowadays regard themselves as Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil voters for life, always voting the party ticket, always following the party line.
Polls and academic research have confirmed the growing number of these ‘‘vote-switchers’’ - middle ground voters who move their votes from party to party, eschewing traditional party loyalties.
While we still sometimes think of the public in terms of large voting blocks - about 40 per cent of them Fianna Fáilers, about 28 per cent Fine Gaelers, and about 10 per cent Labour voters and so on - in actual fact, the real picture appears to be much more fragmented than that.
Throw in an increasingly anti-political culture and it’s clear that such voters will not be convinced simply by appeals to party loyalty. They must be convinced, and that’s why campaigns matter.
The evidence of the past two weeks of campaigning is that the No side is doing a slightly better job of convincing undecideds than the Yes side. That is the danger for the government and for Brussels in these poll figures today.
A look at Labour voters further illustrates the point. Though the party has been consistently and vocally pro-Lisbon, has a high-profile MEP, a former leader who is heading up one of the civil society groups campaigning for the treaty, and a leader who is using his Yes campaign to introduce himself to the public, the party’s voters are split, and marginally against the treaty.
Campaigns matter. The No campaign - sometimes contradictory, sometimes content to wilfully ignore its warnings in previous campaigns, but always energetic and committed - has had the better of this past fortnight. Instead of being an achilles heel, its diversity has been a strength. Two weeks ago, it looked as if the No momentum was gone. Now that’s not so clear.
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Originally Posted by nicenin
