T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has denied that Heather Humphreys can no longer win the presidential election or that the gap to Catherine Connolly is unbridgeable.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said many Labour supporters would be \u201chorrified\u201d at the prospect of Ms Connolly in the \u00c1ras, while he appealed to Fianna F\u00e1il and other voters to consider who was most closely aligned to their own position.<\/p>\n
The Humphreys campaign would be \u201casking Middle Ireland to lend us their vote\u201d Mr Harris said.<\/p>\n
Asked if the Fine Gael candidate could not now win, Mr Harris claimed 49pc of public support was still available to be won.<\/p>\n
Speaking at Farmleigh in Dublin, where he is attending a North-South Ministerial Council meeting, Mr Harris said: \u201cNot at all. Heather Humphreys’ campaign is growing day by day in terms of the number of people from outside the Fine Gael campaign and family that are backing her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI think that’s something that’s not much discussed. I hear a lot of reference to Heather Humphreys as the Fine Gael candidate, which she is, but she’s also the candidate that’s now backed by a number of members of the Labour Party, a number of members of the Green Party, a number of members of the Fianna F\u00e1il party, including the Taoiseach and the former Fianna F\u00e1il taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, many Independent TDs, Michael Healy Rae, Se\u00e1n Canney, Marian Harkin, and many Independent councillors as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw in the last opinion poll, there’s lots of people who are looking at the presidential ballot, and they’re saying, \u2018I thought there would be more choice\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course, for a whole variety of reasons that didn’t come to pass. Now we’re getting to a stage where this day week, people will have a binary choice to make between two female candidates, two good people, but two good people with a very different view of our country.”<\/p>\n
Mr Harris continued: “I think a lot of people are thinking this through very carefully. And I think they might be saying, \u2018Well, who is most closely aligned with my views?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that’s very much why we’re in the space of asking Middle Ireland to lend us their vote.\u201d <\/p>\n
Asked as an experienced politician if he accepted that the gap is now unbridgeable, Mr Harris replied: \u201cNot at all. People probably thought Se\u00e1n Gallagher was going to be president, because that’s what all the polls and that’s what all the pundits thought as well [in the 2011 contest]. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut what I do hope is that we have a good turnout. I think that’s really important. And I think there’s a lot of people who are civic minded, who’ve never missed a vote in their life, but they might be sitting at home this weekend saying \u2018I’m still not sure which way to go\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say to them two things, please vote. And secondly, on reflection, and on balance, I hope you’ll find Heather Humphreys to be the candidate most closely aligned with your presidential preference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said it was \u201cquite astonishing, the surface level analysis of the opinion poll that we saw published in recent days”.<\/p>\n
There some very stark figures there, he insisted.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost 50pc of the electorate not yet sure in terms of the candidate. I think 49pc are saying they\u2019re not really sure on either candidate. That’s a very big number,” Mr Harris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite a lot of undecideds, quite a lot of people are saying they’re not going to vote. And I think there’s a job for all of us in public life, all of us who are civic minded, all of us who value our democracy, to say that the last week of this campaign really needs everybody to get engaged. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Irish people take their vote extremely seriously. And I think when push comes to shove and people think this through in the next number of days, they’re going to say, \u2018Okay, I might be a Fianna F\u00e1il voter, and I was hoping for an FF candidate. That didn’t happen\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey might be a Labour voter, but I\u2019m horrified that they’re backing Catherine Connolly. She was somebody who rallied against us for years and years and didn’t support Michael D Higgins but supported Gemma O\u2019Doherty. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for her.\u2019”<\/p>\n
Mr Harris added: \u201cThen they’re saying, \u2018Who will I vote for?\u2019 And I think, as they look through that, I think that’s a good opportunity for Heather Humphreys, because Catherine Connolly is not the successor to Michael D Higgins. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe actually left the Labour Party over Michael D Higgins and indeed nominated Gemma O\u2019Doherty to be our president.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senan Molony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has denied that Heather Humphreys can no longer win the presidential election or that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1921,18,13,14,4771,553,6,555,19,17,19487,11,12,15,16,5,59,47,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-127736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catherine-connolly","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-fianna-fail","15":"tag-fine-gael","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-heather-humphreys","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jim-gavin","21":"tag-latest-news","22":"tag-latestnews","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-presidential-election","27":"tag-sinn-fein","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}