Sinnott surge to rattle Fianna Fáil

Kathy Sinnott is set for another nail-biting clash with Fianna Fáil in the European elections, according to the Irish Examiner/Prime Time opinion poll, conducted by Lansdowne Market Research.

In an unexpected development, Ms Sinnott, an Independent candidate, has emerged as the main challenger to Fianna Fáil veteran Gerry Collins's prospects of retaining his seat in the South constituency, formerly Munster.

Despite only three in 10 voters being satisfied with the way the Government is running the country, Fianna Fáil's support in the local elections has not dropped significantly in the South as the poll shows the party taking 39% of the vote.

Fine Gael is also faring well with 30% and Sinn Féin continues to gain ground, rising to 8%. The PDs returned just 2% of voters, with Labour at 10% and the Greens at 5%.

After narrowly missing out on taking a seat from Fianna Fail in the 2002 general election, Ms Sinnott is polling strongly following Pat Cox's decision not to run this time out. Attracting 13% of first preferences in the poll, Ms Sinnott is within 2% of Mr Collins on 15%, who now looks vulnerable to losing his seat.

Fianna Fáil's Brian Crowley looks set to again top the poll in the constituency, with 30% of the votes twice the level of support attained by Mr Collins.

The poll was conducted among a sample of 500 people in the South constituency on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

It was conducted face-to-face in the respondent's home and used a ballot paper featuring all the candidates' names.

Another surprising finding is the strong showing of Fine Gael's sole candidate, Simon Coveney, who on the basis of this poll, will attract 26% of the vote, and be elected on the first count to the second seat.

The results are deeply disappointing for the Labour Party, with the party's candidate in the three-seat constituency, Brendan Ryan, attracting only 5% of the vote, putting him last in the race, behind both the Sinn Féin and Green Party candidates.

Following Mr Cox's decision not to run, it was widely thought that Mr Crowley, Mr Coveney and Mr Collins would take the three seats in the constituency, where the number of seats has been reduced from four to three.

The poll clearly shows, however, that while Mr Collins would take almost 70% of the transfers from Mr Crowley's surplus, Ms Sinnott would pick up substantial transfers from all the other candidates.

Based on these findings, Ms Sinnott would actually win the last seat by the narrowest of margins.

Although working from her Cork base, the poll clearly shows that Ms Sinnott's appeal has broadened across the constituency and she is now benefiting from the tradition of a protest vote and independent MEPs being elected in Munster.

The poll also confirms the failure of the vote management strategy and the constituency divide, introduced by Fianna Fáil director of elections John O'Donoghue, as the party vote is not being divided equally between their two candidates.