They can even consider rewriting the lyrics of their favourite political song:

"Young and old we all approve/He's kept the country on the move/He'll help the nation to improve/So rise and follow Bertie."

The backslappers and yahoo-ers would have reason to hoist their leader shoulder-high in anticipated celebration. Given the results of today's Sunday Tribune opinion poll, the first national survey of this election year, it looks as if we are facing into a contest that is already over. With 39% of the national vote, Fianna Fáil will win, again. With 22% of the national vote, Fine Gael will lose, again. If this is what happens, most likely next May, then the election campaign will be about which of the other parties gets to share office with Fianna Fáil, again.

This outcome will make many wonder if we now live in a variation of a singleparty state. Fianna Fáil is that single party, with the only twist being its need for a coalition partner to have a secure Dáil majority. Since 1989, Fianna Fáil has three times joined forces with the PDs and once with the Labour Party. Its government partner options are limitless.

The party that can snuggle up to anyone Plonked in the centre of the Irish political spectrum, Fianna Fáil can move to the left or to the right as it seeks to snuggle up to various coalition partners. If the PDs are needed, Fianna Fáil strikes a chord for the market and private enterprise. If Labour is needed, Fianna Fáil shouts loud about social solidarity. In the near future, if the Greens become a live option, Fianna Fáil will insulate every house in the country. And when the day comes that only Sinn Féin provides access to a stable coalition, Fianna Fáil - wait and see!

- will commit to a referendum on a united Ireland.

In our coalition system Fianna Fáil is the party that has it all. Indeed, there is little in today's IMS Millward Brown poll to dispel a sense that Fianna Fáil will not achieve its hat-trick of election wins.

Even with a three-point decline in its support since last October, Ahern's party is well-positioned.

Fianna Fáil's junior partners, the PDs, now stand at 5%, up one percentage point since the previous poll. Moreover, Michael McDowell has received a bounce in his satisfaction rating, up seven points to 42%, with no indication that news of Fine Gael's negative billboard campaign has made any impact.

Ahern's own high popularity has also increased, while satisfaction with the government has remained positive at a stable 51% since last October.

There is some solace for advisers to the main two opposition parties as they have clawed back some of the ground lost after the debacle over the payments to Bertie Ahern controversy last autumn. In the six weeks between the September and October opinion polls commissioned by this newspaper, the combined Fine Gael/Labour vote fell from 38% to 30%. They have regained half of that loss - each party is up two percentage points with Fine Gael at 22% and Labour at 12%. But no matter how these figures are presented, the fact is that Fine Gael, today, is one percentage point below its 2002 general election result while Labour has added a single percentage point since the contest five years ago.

Labour will find some comfort in its strong showing in Dublin, while Pat Rabbitte's satisfaction rating at 47% remains consistently positive. However, the underlying results in today's poll should greatly concern Fine Gael. The party is not winning sufficient support among voters in the pivotal Dublin region where it remains in third place, with the Greens seeking to edge it even further behind. Neither has Fine Gael convinced enough young voters or enough of those in the professional AB social class to back its agenda.

The Sunday Tribune IMS Millward Brown opinion poll was carried out last Monday and Tuesday. It came on the back of an up-and-down seven days for Fine Gael. There was the mixed media reaction to the party's decision to target Michael McDowell in a national billboard campaign. This was followed by John Deasy's questioning of Enda Kenny's ability to become taoiseach, which gained some limited credibility with Damien English's intervention.

There was also, however, the generally positive response to Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness's decision to contest the general election in Louth.

The poll was conducted at a time when Fine Gael was very much in the news, but still there is no evidence of an uplift in its popularity. The low support is matched by a negative perception of its party leader. Satisfaction with how Kenny is doing his job is at 39% - the lowest score of the six main party leaders.

His satisfaction rating fell last autumn, and there has been no shift in the public's opinion of him in the past three months.

What is worrying for Fine Gael is the continuing high level of dissatisfaction recorded last autumn. In today's opinion poll, 41% said they were dissatisfied with Kenny's performance - down a single percentage point from the previous poll last October. There is also strong resistance to Kenny in the capital. Only 34% of those poll in Dublin were satisfied with how the Fine Gael leader was doing his job, and 45% were dissatisfied.

But it is when he is compared to the taoiseach that the Fine Gael leader fares worst. Only 14% of those polled believe Kenny is the party leader who best understands the social and economic issues affecting modern Ireland. Alarmingly for Kenny, only 50% of his party voters said he best understood the main socio-economic issues. Similarly, when asked which of the two main leaders would make a better taoiseach, only 69% of Fine Gael voters chose Kenny.

By comparison, 80% of Fianna Fáil voters said Bertie Ahern is the leader who best understands the main socioeconomic issues affecting the country.

Moreover, 90% of Fianna Fáil voters said Ahern would make a better taoiseach than the Fine Gael leader.

Battling the incumbent in Government Buildings is never an easy task. But more than four years after Kenny assumed the leadership of Fine Gael, the voters do not seem convinced that the Mayo man can run the country as taoiseach.

It would seem that a shift in public attitudes occurred last autumn. In the six weeks between the two Sunday Tribune opinion polls in September and October last, there was a political controversy which threatened to remove Ahern from office. Kenny was clearly in focus. But rather than turning on the Fianna Fáil leader for taking money in dubious circumstances, the public decided his crime was not venal while Kenny lost out.

Fianna Fáil's virtuous circle It may well be that, last autumn, the voters for the first time looked seriously at the alternative on offer and were not persuaded. In this latest poll, that view is repeated. Only more opinion poll results - and the ultimate test on polling day itself - will test this hypothesis. But, at the very least, today's poll does suggest Fianna Fáil will enter a second decade of continuous coalition government.

Fianna Fáil may seem to have been in power forever - and when it comes to recent memory, it has been. Over the past two decades, since 1987, Fianna Fáil has ruled for 17-and-a-half years.

The only break was the two-and-a- half year interval of the John Bruton-led Rainbow coalition in the mid-1990s.

It is a virtuous circle for Fianna Fáil.

The longer the party is in power the more it benefits from the in-built advantages of controlling the reins of office. It takes all the real decisions that affect people's lives, makes all the announcements and controls all the appointments.

But any group of politicians, no matter how gifted they are, can only give so much to the job. There is a limited time in which any politician can make a significant impact. That is why a churning of governments is good for democracy.

But that alone is not enough to convince voters to change administrations.

The results of today's opinion poll proves it. Fine Gael and Enda Kenny do not seem to have done enough to convince the voters that a better policy alternative is on offer.

The Sunday Tribune IMS Millward Brown poll shows there was no budget bounce for the government - the voters took the benefits as their entitlement - but neither was there a serious negative result from the recently-published report of the Moriarty tribunal. Most voters seem settled in their views.

Interestingly, the results confirm the very strong loyalty of the Irish electorate, with a solid block of voters firmly committed to their party of choice. Of those currently backing Fianna Fáil, 85% voted for the party at the 2002 general election. For Fine Gael the figure is 87% while for Labour it is 82%. Some 92% of those who supported the Greens in the current poll voted for the party in 2002 - the highest loyalty level among the main parties. The PDs at 72% recorded the lowest level.

With such strong party loyalty, a Fine Gael-led alternative will find it hard to edge up its share of the vote. The only hope that Enda Kenny has of forming a government, as this writer has said previously, is the ABBA strategy - Anybody But Bertie Ahern. The trouble for Kenny, however, is that Ahern is already open to doing deals with anybody else.

So how does that song go, again. . . "Hail the leader/Hail the man/We'll Rise and Follow Bertie."

Satisfaction with party leaders

Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way X is doing his job as leader of X?

Bertie Ahern Fianna Fáil Satisfied 58% (+2) Dissatisfied 39% (no change) Don't know 4%
Enda Kenny Fine Gael Satisfied 39% (+1) Dissatisfied 41% (-1) Don't know 20%
Pat Rabbitte Labour Party Satisfied 47% (+2) Dissatisfied 32% (-4) Don't know 21%
Michael McDowell PDs Satisfied 42% (+7) Dissatisfied 44% (no change) Don't know 14%
Trevor Sargent Green Party Satisfied 45% (+2) Dissatisfied 22% (-4) Don't know 33%
Gerry Adams Sinn Féin Satisfied 52% (+7) Dissatisfied 27% (-4) Don't know 21%