In the last twelve months, the Irish Labour Party has undergone a dramatic ascent towards the top of the political opinion polls. For the last year, it has seemed that if a general election was called tomorrow, every taxi driver, barman, barber and other such stereotypically opinionated members of society would fall over themselves rushing for the polling booth to put a giant X beside their local Labour candidates’ name.
But is this sentiment shared by the capital’s student population? Are the students of Dublin University as eager for change as the people who voted for Labour in the tns/MRBI poll of February of this year which put Labour at 24% popularity? Last week, we polled Trinity students and now the results are in, the votes are in, the fat lady has sung and other such clichés that suggest a sense of finality.
When we asked you what party you would vote for if an election was called before Christmas, 34.9% of you told us that you would vote Labour. That means that if Trinity students were the only voters in the next general election (and God knows how we’d like to be) then Labour would more than beat their previous record of 33 seats won in the 1992 general election. It would be a red tide, seeing the Labour party, at the very least, taking up a significant amount of seats in the next government. In our poll, that puts Eamonn Gilmore’s party almost 20% above their next nearest rivals, Fine Gael. As for Fianna Fáil; well they’re ahead of Sinn Fein anyway. That’s good news for them, right?
These results were mirrored when we asked the question, “Which politician would you like to see as the next Taoiseach?” Surprise, surprise; Comrade Gilmore stole almost 30% of the vote again, showing that Trinity students are firmly in Labour’s corner for the next election. More intriguingly, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan is only 6% away from Gilmore’s lead suggesting that the discontent with the soldiers of destiny is not comprehensive.
In recent months, it has appeared that Lenihan has been the keystone that is keeping the whole Fianna Fail house of cards from disintegrating into political flotsam. So maybe it is no wonder that the ailing Minister is looking like a diamond in the rough. On the other hand one has to wonder how many Hist members voted for their former librarian. Biffo is looking rather deflated, coming in at 3.8%, the lowest in the poll. Cowen has taken a battering in the polls recently and if he was looking for sympathy from Trinity students in this poll, he was clearly very misguided indeed.
But forget the politicians; forget the parties and the ard fheiseanna and the electioneering. We wanted to get a better sense of what kind of person you think should lead this country. We wanted to know what qualities you think should be brought to the role of Taoiseach and what non political figure you thought would be able to meet the requirements and match the standards that the job demands. The person you thought would best lead this country out of recession and back into the economic driving seat was our esteemed Ents officer, Mr Darragh Genockey. The students of Dublin University have spoken; we want to session through the recession. We don’t need to worry about economic indicators and tax, as long as we have 3 quid drinks and the odd beer bong we’re sound. I’m inclined to agree with this logic myself. Want to stimulate the economy? It’s nothing a few cheap vodkas and red bulls can’t fix. Let’s get behind Genockey’s stimulus package. On the other hand the runners up include write-in candidates such as public intellectual, Louis Walsh and, as one student wrote, “Gorgeous George Hook, aka The Right Hook, aka dreamboat extraordinaire.” I think we’ll stick with Genockey.
At the end of the day there are still those of us who are still skeptical about Ireland’s new political landscape. We stopped some students on the cobbles and asked them if they thought that Labour’s new position heralded anything new for Ireland’s political topography. The answers were varied. Ciaran, a junior freshman studying Geography and physics told us, “at this stage I think they’re all the same. Take the example of the greens. Everyone thought they were going to do something different and look where that got us.” This sense of disillusionment is permeating every layer of Irish society.
Yet still, a full 80% of students plan to vote in the next election. Gerard, a 4th year physics student, is not sure if Labour’s new position has anything to do with party policy. He says that, “people are more impressed with Gilmore as a leader than they are with the Labour party or any of their policies.” So is this perceived swing in the polls to the left bolstered by a lack of choice or is it indeed a fundamental shift in the Irish psyche? I’m inclined to agree with Emma, a second year BESS student, when she says that, “Labour is something new.” Whatever the case, even if a Fine Gael-Labour coalition cant get us out of this mess, I for one think its time to hand over the reins and let someone else try their luck at the roulette wheel.
