Brian Cowen must be wondering where it all went wrong.
Support for his government and party have slumped to a record low, according a TNS MRBI opinion poll to be published in the Irish Times tomorrow.
The polls confirms findings in a Red C poll commissioned by the Sunday Business Post a couple of weeks ago.
Fine Gael is confirmed in a seven point lead over Fianna Fáil, according to the TNS/MRBI poll in tomorrow morning’s Irish Times.
The governing party is down to just 27%.
Meanwhile Fine Gael enjoys the heady heights of 34% support.
Minor parties are unchanged, what swings there are, are within the margin of error.
But what should worry Fine Gael (and Labour, if they are hoping to become junior coalition partners) is the 7% rise in support for independents, more than double their previous score.
Those independent voters are just the people an alternative government should appeal to.
Some of them may well migrate to Fine Gael, since there’s a good chance that some of them would until last week have been classified as Progressive Democrat supporters.
But others won’t.
And those voters will make the difference between stable government and reliance on independents.
