Mary Banotti will win the presidential election, according to a telephone poll of 300 farmers. The opinion poll, carried out by the Irish Farmers Journal, gave Ms Banotti 41.8 per cent of first preferences. Slightly more than 38 per cent of farmers said they would give the Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrat candidate, Mary McAleese, their first preference.
Independent candidate, Derek Nally, was ranked third with 8.2 per cent, Dana Rosemary Scallon received 6.3 per cent and the Labour candidate, Adi Roche, had 5.5 per cent.
More than 20 per cent said they were undecided and 37 per cent said they would only give one candidate a vote.
Ms Banotti will get almost 36 per cent of Adi Roche's transfers, according to the poll, while Mary McAleese and Dana get just over 21 per cent of them. None of the Adi Roche voters said they would give Derek Nally their number two.
Half of Dana's second preferences divide equally between Derek Nally and Mary Banotti. Mary McAleese gets 19 per cent of them and almost 19 per cent of Dana voters say they will not give a second preference.
The poll is published in Journal Plus, the magazine with the Irish Farmers Journal.
Asked about the poll, Mary McAleese said: "It's a poll of 300 - I suppose it's a small enough poll. But all polls at the end of the day are snapshots in time and it behoves all of us to accept the volatility of them. And what it does is make me more and more determined to get my message across and to get around as many people as possible so they can get a true sense of me as a person rather than the sense of me which the mischief-makers would want to make of me.
"Polls are just a matter of things to keep us amused until the real poll."
