It wasn’t supposed to be like this. By now, Fine Gael expected to be poised for a final-week rally towards opinion poll percentages in the mid-30s.

The latest Red C poll for the Irish Sun, however, brings a bombshell. Fine Gael is not accelerating off into the distance but, at 26 per cent, has been dragged back into the pack and is now behind Independents and others on 29 per cent.

TDs, Ministers and party figures are asking themselves how and why it has gone wrong. Perhaps the main fault began when the Coalition took office and did not explain its actions adequately to the electorate.

Voters knew Fianna Fáil was to blame for the crash, and still do. Fine Gael needed a better communication strategy than merely pointing at Fianna Fáil and saying: “They did it.”

But in the here and now of the election campaign the Fine Gael message has been confused. The party of prudence has found itself accused of an unaffordable tax cut with its promise to abolish the universal social charge (USC). Combined with that, it has also promised to spend substantial sums on investing in public services.

The party that just over three years ago almost brought down the government by blocking a Labour attempt to impose an additional 3 per cent of USC on income above €100,000 has now proposed an additional 5 per cent levy on incomes of more than €100,000 after USC has been abolished.

Having soundly managed the national finances over the past five years and overseen an economic recovery, Fine Gael saw its father figure Michael Noonan – revered within the party – mishandle the communication of its economic election package to such an extent that Sinn Féin could give lectures on bad sums and dodgy figures.

All those factors have combined to tarnish some of Fine Gael’s key calling cards: stability, prudence and competence. Allied with that, the campaign has been flat, lifeless and dull.

The idea of Kenny whizzing around the country shaking hands with all and sundry is nonsense. Yesterday, for example, the Taoiseach ostensibly visited Dundalk, Co Louth, and Kells and Ratoath in Co Meath.

But to say Kenny visited the three towns would be a stretch. In Dundalk, he visited online payment company PayPal, which has hosted numerous government announcements in the past.

Quick calls

He then made a quick call to the constituency offices of Fine Gael TDs Helen McEntee and Regina Doherty. On each occasion the Taoiseach’s car pulled up directly outside the constituency office. He went from car to office and office to car.

Instead of a visit, it was more akin to the prank played by teenagers, when they ring the doorbell on a house but run away before the homeowner gets to answer.

Anyone hearing local media coverage that the Taoiseach was in town would be forgiven for feeling like that homeowner – they know someone was there but have had neither sight nor sound of them. A campaign run along those lines is more Noonan 2002 than Kenny 2007 or 2011.

On Newstalk radio, former Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery made the reasonable point that the central election message of “let’s keep the recovery going” assumes everyone has felt the recovery. Noonan and Kenny themselves say the recovery has yet to be “felt behind every door”.

Flannery also made the not unreasonable point that Ireland was a young country and that the Fine Gael campaign needed to see more if its younger political figures such as Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney.

Others in Fine Gael acknowledge that there needs to a greater articulation of the party’s vision for the future, of what it wants Irish society to be.

Fiscal space

Thus far the debate has been about how to spend what possible fruits there might be available, the now notorious “fiscal space”. The Fine Gael plan contains very worthwhile elements, such as extending childcare provision and reforming the welfare system to incentivise work.

One Minister argued that the “long-term economic plan” needed to be sold more as a vision instead of a blueprint.

Another said the latest poll meant the warnings of chaos and instability would only become louder. Kenny has warned of a flight of capital and jobs if the election proved inconclusive.

Expect more of the same doomsday warnings, only louder.

The crew around Kenny yesterday felt Fine Gael would eventually rebound to about the mid-30s mark. The entire Fine Gael strategy is built around that assumption, which could still apply. Only now the party needs more than a rebound: it needs a boomerang.

And – thanks to the decision to hold a very short campaign – it has only a week for it to come hurtling back to it.