Irish Examiner poll - Election still wide open as FF takes a hit

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern will derive some small comfort from today’s Irish Examiner opinion poll showing Fianna Fáil less damaged than expected, even though the party is continuing to slide as support for Fine Gael and Labour grows.

In the first opinion poll since the General Election was called, the survey, conducted for the Irish Examiner last Wednesday and Tuesday by Lansdowne Research, follows the re-kindling of the Bertiegate factor when the Fianna Fáil campaign was visibly unravelling.

However, it preceded the launch of the party’s manifesto where an embattled Taoiseach faced a grilling about the controversial purchase of his home in the 1990s.