NATIONWIDE POLLING HAS has found that young voters are most likely going to give a first-preference vote to Sinn Féin in the European elections this coming June.

The first edition in a series of The Journal/Ireland Thinks polls has found 30% of 18-34-year-olds intend to vote for a Sinn Féin candidate, placing them as the most popular option for the cohort. 

The country’s youngest voter group feel strongly about the European Union’s response to the conflict in Gaza and are less exercised about the EU’s impact on the economy or climate change.

When asked to rank the EU’s climate or economic measures on a scale of one to five (with 1 being very bad and 5 being very good), most of the group expressed a more neutral position towards two key pillars of EU legislation, ranking them – on average – at 2.6 and 2.8 respectively.

However, the majority of young voters expressed a much stronger, more negative view on the EU’s performance on Israeli-Palestinian relations. When asked to rank the EU’s performance on the Israel-Gaza conflict, the bloc scored a 1.8 with the young voters.

53% of 18-34-year-old Irish citizens rated the EU’s performance on the issue – ongoing since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel – ‘very bad’, a 1 on the polling scale. 

When compared to the same question but on the war in Ukraine, the group ranked the EU’s performance a stronger 3.1 in comparison. 

The EU’s response to the conflict in Gaza was heavily criticised after the Israeli flag was flown and projected onto the EU Commission’s building in the wake of the 7 October attacks. Further criticism came after the Presidents of both the EU Commission and Parliament visited Israel shortly thereafter.

Israel’s swift and violent reply to the attack has killed tens-of-thousands Gazan civilians. 

Although the European position has softened since, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen does still tout the bloc’s “solidarity” with Israel.

Von der Leyen also announced in October, shortly after the backlash, that the EU would immediately treble its humanitarian aid to Palestine after the al-Ahli Hospital in Northern Gaza was hit in a strike.

Today, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged allies of Israel – primarily the United States – to stop sending it weapons as “too many people” are being killed in Gaza.

This came as US President Joe Biden commented last week that Israel’s military action was “over the top”.

Borrell said: “Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people have been killed.”

“Is [it] not logical?” he asked, in a Brussels conference alongside the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA whom Israel is pressuring to resign.

The mixed response has seemingly left a bad taste in the mouths of young voters, as 75% of them said their overall view of the EU has been negatively impacted since the escalation of the conflict in Gaza.

Under half, 45%, of young voters said their view of the EU had been “somewhat disimproved” since the escalation, while 30% of them said it was “much disimproved”.

In the aftermath of the 7 October attack, Hungary’s EU Commissioner Oliver Várhelyi said that the EU would place €691 million of support to Palestine “under review”.

The move was slammed by many Irish MEPs, across the political spectrum, and labelled a “solo run”. The review decision was reversed shortly after and Várhelyi later was quizzed by MEPs about the decision.

A cross-party reaction against the EU’s quick decisions to disregard Palestinian issues has since been established between Irish MEPs, with some telling The Journal it was an issue of broad agreement. 

The vast amount of Ireland’s sitting MEPs – only one of whom is of Sinn Féin – have taken a pro-Palestinian approach to such debates in Brussels and Strasbourg. About 29% of 18-34-year-olds intend to vote for one of the three Government political parties, a combined number still behind Sinn Féin’s 30%.

Fine Gael and the Green Party rank marginally higher among the younger voters, polling 10% each, when compared to Fianna Fáil who were the lowest ranked party overall at 9%.

Over half of the group say they will vote for a party in opposition, with the Social Democrats polling a strong 12% and ranking as the second most popular party for the group.

The Social Democrats have yet to announce any candidates for the elections in June and only nominated one candidate in just one constituency in 2019.

Overall, 82% of 18-34-year-olds say they are likely to cast a vote in the election – despite previous exit polls suggesting a historically low turnout – but 19% are still unsure which party they will vote for.

The Journal/Ireland Thinks series of polls will run each month ahead of the European parliament elections in June. It will continue to explore voter intentions, measure Irish public sentiment towards the EU on a number of issues and highlight any potential opinion gaps between different demographics of Irish society on matters important to them. 

The poll of 1,255 people was carried out between the 2 and 7 February and has a  margin of error of 2.8%. Those who were unsure of which party they’d vote for, or unsure if they’d vote at all, are excluded from the figures.

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This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.