The new First Minister of Northern Ireland has an approval rating of 55%, according to the most recent Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks survey, which places her far ahead of Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, who is in second place.

Based on the results, Ms. O'Neill performed far better in the eyes of the people than her party's leader, Mary Lou McDonald, who had a 39% approval rating, ranking her fifth behind Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar and Social Democrats' Holly Cairns (41%).

The approval ratings of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste increased by 3 and 4 percentage points, respectively.

Despite a two-percentage point drop since the last survey, Sinn Féin continues to be the most popular party in terms of overall party support (27%).

With 20% of the vote, Fine Gael is in second place, closely followed by Fianna Fáil (18%), who each gained one of Sinn Féin's lost percentage points.

Eleven percent went to Independents/Other, while the remaining ten percent went to the Social Democrats (seven percent), Labour, the Green Party (four percent each), Solidarity-People Before Profit (two percent each), and Aontú.

The survey also revealed that voters are still quite unsure about their intentions ahead of Friday's referendums, with more than one-third of respondents saying they are unsure about their vote on the two proposed Constitutional amendments.

Half of the respondents to the research, which was conducted on Friday, said they had no trust in Minister for Media Catherine Martin because of the way she has handled the continuing scandal at RTÉ.