Sinn Féin remains the most popular party in the State.
Support for the Government has plummeted in recent months, according to a new opinion poll released on Wednesday, 14 July.
The latest Irish Times / Ipsos opinion poll – the first such poll since April – shows Fianna Fáil down three points to 20% and Fine Gael down four points to 18%.
Sinn Féin remains the most popular party in the State, rising three points to 36%, while Green Party support remains unchanged at 3%.
Fine Gael’s decrease in support has left the party with its lowest rating in the Ipsos series since 1994.
In terms of the coalition party leaders, Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s satisfactory rating is also down 11 points to 40%, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar’s has dropped 12 to 36% and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan’s fell by four points to 15%
At the same time, Sinn Féin’s leader Mary Lou McDonald’s rating rose by one point to 43%.
Meanwhile, support for the Government itself has fallen by 12 points to 31%, with the Irish Times attributing the drop in the coalition’s popularity to the rising cost of living in recent months.
People were also asked if they thought Ireland is “generally going in the right direction or the wrong direction” as part of the poll.
60% said the country is going in the wrong direction, with only 30% answering that they thought the country is going in the right direction.
The opinion poll was conducted on 10 – 12 July among 1,200 adults at 120 sampling points across all constituencies.
The results come after the Government survived a vote of no confidence earlier this week with a final vote of 85 to 66.
Prior to the vote, the Taoiseach dismissed it as a “cynical ploy” on behalf of Sinn Féin, adding that “the Irish people do not want an election”.
Main image via Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie
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