What that Sunday Business Post poll really tells us.

The Sunday Business Post poll last Sunday has been poked and prodded by the usual suspects. As you are probably aware, it came up with the following figures: Fine Gael 30%, Labour 14%, Fianna Fail 18%, Sinn Fein 17%, Independents and Others (including Green Party at 3% and Socialist Party at 1%) 20%.
Reading them, I came to a different conclusion as to where the Irish people are politically at this moment, if you take their voting preferences and match them not to who they are voting for, but what they are voting for. Look at it this way:
Broad moderate conservative status quo (FF,FG, and say, half the independent vote): 58%
Slightly lefty but not too much of that Swedish taxes stuff (Labour): 14%
Radical let’s try something that sounds new but probably isn’t going by their record in the North (SF): 17%
Genuinely radical (Green,Socialist, some independents): 11%
Whatever way you look at it, even during the biggest crisis in the history of the state, the Irish people are still very, very conservative.