Impressive exit poll shows almost half support Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael coalition – The Irish Times

Good morning and welcome to an unusual Saturday edition of the political digest.

Dramatic exit poll last night resultswhich showed the three largest parties clustered around the 20-21 percent mark pointed the way to the likely outcome of the election. general election.

The counting of votes will begin at 32 counting centers across the country this morning at 9am, but it will be several hours before the picture begins to become clearer.

In the meantime, however, there is a rich set of exit poll data that sheds further light and explains yesterday’s votes.

Here are some of the findings:

Nearly half of voters in yesterday’s general election preferred a coalition government based on a combination of Fianna Fáil And Fine GaelBased on The Irish Times/RTÉ/TG4/TCD exit poll.

Almost a third of voters (31 per cent) said they would prefer a coalition of just Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil; another 9 percent would prefer a government made up of these two parties plus independents; a further 9 per cent said they would like to see a government from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and one or more smaller parties.

Combined, this amounts to a total of 49 per cent of voters in the exit poll who want to see a government led by Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil.

The next most popular choice is a government led by Sinn Féin without Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, who chose 22 per cent. A further 7 per cent said they wanted to see a Fianna Fáil-Sinn Féin coalition (including just 9 per cent of Fianna Fáil voters) and 21 per cent said they wanted to see “something else”.

The most popular choice for taoiseach is the Fianna Fáil leader. Michelle Martinwhich was the preferred choice of 35 percent. He criticizes the Sinn Féin leader. Mary Lou McDonaldwho has 34 per cent, while Fine Gael leader Simon Harris has 27 per cent. Only 5 percent did not answer.

When asked which issue was most important when deciding how to vote, housingHomelessness was the clear leader with 28 percent, followed by cost of living (19 percent) and health (17 percent).

Economic stability (9 percent), climate change (4 percent), crime (2 percent), local transportation and roads (2 percent) and child care (2 percent) all played smaller roles.

Immigration – which has been high on the list of issues of public interest for much of the year – played a minor role, with just 6 percent nominated.

housing issue was more prominent among younger voters, with 42 percent of voters under 34 citing it as the most important issue.

More than half (52 percent) of voters say their standard of living has remained the same over the past 12 months, while 35 percent say it has worsened and 13 percent say it has improved.

Those who voted for Sinn Féin (49 per cent), People Before Profit (49 per cent) and Aontu (41 per cent) were much more likely to say their standard of living had worsened.

The poll, which is a joint project of The Irish Times, RTÉ, TG4 and the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, was carried out by Ipsos B&A among 5,018 voters who left 253 polling stations across all 43 constituencies yesterday.

All respondents were asked how they voted and then a series of other questions, the results of which will be published this morning.

To ask as many questions as possible, the sample was divided into four parts, and each quarter – about 1,250 people – was asked a different question. This is the same size as the nationally representative poll usually carried out for The Irish Times by Ipsos B&A. The error is about 3 percent.

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