Campaign Diary Days 18 and 19 - The Final Push

The weekend, the time of rest, recharge the batteries, mow the lawn, do the shopping. Unless you happen to be involved in the general election campaign. With less than a week to go to polling day Saturday and, to a lesser extent, Sunday were the last days to get a large blitz of postering and leafleting done. Volunteers' time is precious and so co-ordination of this mass mobilization is key. Luckily after Friday night's wash out, the weather held off over the weekend which allowed thousands of leaflets to be dropped right across the constituency.

Support for parties has now pretty much solidified. A few weeks ago many people at the doors were declaring themselves as undecided. Now it is rare to find a person who hasn't picked a side. It is unlikely that many voters will be swayed by the final debate on Tuesday unless some major incident occurs. If Kenny gets outed as a member of the IRA, Gilmore starts singing the old Soviet anthem or Martin actually apologizes for his repeated screwups over the last 14 years then all bets are off but I seriously doubt any of the above will happen.

From here on it it is all about shoring up support. The focus for each candidate will be to make sure the core vote goes to the polling station on Friday. While you might pick up an odd preference here and there in other areas, dropping the ball on home turf will cost you dearly when the boxes are opened on Saturday. At this stage my feet will be glad to move away from Rathmines, Ranelagh and Rathgar where every house seems to have 15 granite steps up to the front door.


As an aside here's a photo of a sign I spotted on a door in Dublin South East. The final few words on the long sentence were "get a decent job".