Holly Cairns
Leader of the Social Democrats
Ireland Thinks/Sunday Independent asks whether people are satisfied or dissatisfied with each leader's performance, but only publishes the satisfied % — no dissatisfied breakdown is shown here because none has been published to verify. "Weighted avg" is satisfaction averaged across 9 real readings with a 3-month recency half-life (weighted by actual elapsed time between polls, since this series isn't evenly spaced), so it's less sensitive to any single reading's noise than the latest figure alone.
A separate, one-off Business Post/Red C, via Irish Examiner favourability reading (May 2026) scored Holly Cairns 47/100 — a different question and scale, not directly comparable to the satisfaction % above, shown here only because it's the one other real reading found for this leader.
Satisfaction over time
% satisfied with Holly Cairns's performance. Solid dots are each real poll's actual reading; the dashed line is a 3-month recency-weighted average (weighted by real elapsed time, not by reading count) with a shaded ±— pp margin-of-error band. These are the 9 real, individually-sourced readings found since January 2025 — coverage of this specific question is uneven, so gaps of several months between points are real gaps in available reporting, not missing data on this site's part.
Holly Cairns has led the Social Democrats since 2023, focusing on housing, climate action, and social justice policy. She represents Cork South-West in Dáil Éireann.