Irish PM’s party sees poll lead narrow ahead of election

reuters_tickers

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris’ Fine Gael party has seen its lead over both its main coalition partner and the main opposition party narrow significantly ahead of a general election on Friday, an opinion poll showed.

Fine Gael is still the most popular party with the support of 22% of respondents, but that is down from 26% three weeks ago, according to the Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks opinion poll, which was taken on Thursday and Friday.

Fine Gael’s main coalition partner Fianna Fail remained on 20%, while opposition Sinn Fein was up two points to 20%.

The bounce in support for Fine Gael triggered by Harris’ appointment as party leader in April is “now history” after a series of campaign missteps, the Sunday Independent said.

Sinn Fein, which had a commanding opinion poll lead until earlier this year, needs to finish well ahead of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to cut off their rivals’ path to re-election, since both have pledged to govern together again without it.