ELECTION 2011: FG top student poll
February 21st, 2011 | By Alan
A nationwide poll of students indicates that Fine Gael are students’ favourite party – narrowly beating Labour by just four percentage points.
However, Labour is the choice of DCU students and the poll indicates they’ll receive well over a third of first preferences from students here.
The results are (DCU students in brackets):
| Fine Gael: 34% (27.27%) | Green Party: 4% (0%) |
| Labour: 30% (36.36%) | Independents: 13% (9.10%) |
| Fianna Fáil: 10% (11.68%) | Others: 3% (5.20%) |
| Sinn Féin: 6% (10.39%) |
73% of students nationally say they’ll vote. 25% say they will not and 3% don’t know. In DCU, the figures are 67%, 32% and 1% respectively.
Eamon Gilmore was favourite for Taoiseach, with 23% support nationally. Enda Kenny was second on 20%, followed by Micheál Martin with 13%. The DCU figures were 22%, 18% and 14% respectively. Despite Martin’s Cork roots, he received just 6% support in UCC.
Elsewhere, 0% of Trinity students surveyed say they will give Sinn Féin candidates their first preference (Their DCU rating of 10.39% is Ireland’s highest). Like DCU, 0% of UL students interviewed say they support the Green Party.
39% of DCU students said they were “not at all” politically engaged. Nationally, the majority (60%) described themselves as averagely or below averagely politically engaged.
Methodology:
1,248 students from six universities were surveyed. The poll was conducted by The College Tribune (UCD), The University Times (TCD), DCUfm and The College View (DCU), An Focal (UL), Sin newspaper (NUIG) and corkstudentnews.ie (UCC).
Nationwide data is available here.
