A miserable poll for Fianna Fáil today as they continue a downward trend in support that appeared to have started back in April 2024, some 3-4 months after the last election.  Support falls by -3% today vs the last poll we conducted in November 2024, but the longer-term trend has seen the party shed -7%-points of support, which is close to a third of their first preference support at the last election.

Looking across different voter blocks, the drop-in support is relatively uniform, but a few key demographic groups do stand out, each of which appears to have beef with the government.

Those looking to get on the property ladder, many of whom are doing so in vain at the moment, are certainly more negative toward the party.  In fact, 19% of voters who own their own home still show support for Fianna Fáil (a similar level to that they achieved at the last election), but among those who don’t own their own home that support for the party falls to just 9%.

It is no surprise based on this information that those aged 25-34, an age when many are trying to get on the housing ladder also see the greatest decline in support, with a -13% drop in support from April 2024 to Jan 2025.

This slide in support for the party, is further added to, by the relatively negative reaction  among voters to a question we asked about the leadership of the party and Micheál Martin himself.  The question posed was whether voters believed that Micheál Martin should remain leader of Fianna Fáil when the two government parties rotate the Taoiseach’s office next year.

Overall, just 21% felt he should stay on as leader, with 46% saying they wanted him to step down.  Perhaps expected given close to 70%-80% are not Fianna Fáil voters anyway.   However, what is potentially more germane to recent leadership discussions is the fact that 1 in 4 of current Fianna Fáil voters, and over 1 in 3 of those who voted for the party at the last election, said he should step down.

So how much should the party react or be worried about these negative results?

Micheál Martin himself will almost certainly point to the fact that the polls had the party down and out in terms of first preference party support for a long period between the 2020 and 2024 elections, and Fianna Fáil still came back to be the largest party in 2024.  Most likely suggesting “the polls were wrong then, and that they probably are again”.

Of course, while this line might be effective at deflecting negative attention on both him and the party, the reality is not quite as this rhetoric portrays.  Polls are not “wrong” in between elections, instead they reflect a snap shot in time of current voter sentiment.

In between elections, it is common for voters to take out their frustrations on the Govt. moving their vote to another possible option for them.  On many occasions this turns into a real switch away from those parties in power, but at other times when they weigh up the alternatives, they return to the fold when it comes to actual voting at the polling booth.

There has also been much analysis on the importance of whether people vote for a party or its candidates.  This has shown that more than any other party in Ireland Fianna Fáil support is driven by candidates on the ground and incumbents.   Outside of elections and the associated on-the-ground campaigning, both national issues and party perceptions tend to overshadow what work individual TDs are doing in their constituencies.

This means negative views of a party, can sometimes be overcome at an election, by the positive attitude toward the local candidate despite him or her belonging to that party. Of course, many a hard-working TD has also fallen victim to overall national party perceptions.

Ultimately, this means that the party’s poor performance in midterm polls, and their improvement as elections come into sight, can both be true reflections shown by polls.  It’s not as if the polls had Fianna Fáil support incorrect in their final polls after all.  In fact, we predicted their first preference vote within 0.9% of the result and had support at similar levels in the 2-3 polls before that.

So, should the party react to today’s poor polling performance or ignore it?

On one side, the slide in support for the party and the negative reaction to its leader is very real and suggests that what they are currently doing in government, isn’t cutting through positively with many of their voters.  The leadership of the party does also appear to be damaged for many, following the debacle over the failed Presidential campaign.

Of course, the party know that they have turned around this type of decline in the polls before, and so many might argue that they shouldn’t overreact to the slump today. However, that re-bound certainly isn’t guaranteed, just because they won back those voters at the last election.

Perhaps the first step is to stop the downward trend, by being seen to actually achieve something in this government, with more positive actions on the key issues impacting voters such as affordability/cost of living and housing imperative.

Download the full chart deck with results below

Business Post RED C Opinion Poll Report – January 2026