Most people who vote don’t care about politics. They vote based on the sort of first impressions you form of people you meet for the first time in a pub.
Simon Harris still has an air of Tory boy off him which he will probably never shake. He looks like an English public school prefect and people imagine him to be a power hungry careerist. Whether that is true or not doesn’t matter, it’s the perception. That’s electoral poison.
People instinctively like Paschal Donohue, especially the majority of the people in the country who don’t vote for Fine Gael and aren’t headbangers. They think Paschal is affable and approachable and reasonable and grounded. They think he’s a decent fella.
Paschal has a touch of the Bertie about him, but people imagine he knows how to open and do housekeeping on his own bank account.