Election Results

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Purple

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Interesting results in the Local and European elections.

There is no support for the far right but we still have considerable support for the far left.
The greens have had a great weekend but it won't translate into National elections; people support environmental issues and are so concerned about Climate Change... right up to the point it costs them something. Just look at the selfish, short sighted myopic protests against water charges. If people won't even pay that then we've no chance of any real changes.

It is also positive that the Shinners lost a good chunk of the mindless protest vote (mostly now with the Greens with the rest still with the far left).
The positive is that there is still a good majority of the electorate who are solidly centralist, despite the huge media coverage the far left gets from the Public sector Broadcaster.
 
I agree.

If the Greens think the outcomes from the Elections on Friday are an endorsement of their policies, they'll repeat the same mistakes of their predecessors, i.e. John Gormley, Dan Boyle, Trevor Sargent, Paul Gogarty.

There's a sizeable swing vote in Irish politics. Labour benefitted from it then lost most of it. Sinn Fein benefitted from it, then lost a lot of it. The Greens are next up, but there's no appetite in this cohort of the electorate for water charges, carbon taxes, limitations on use of private cars, etc.
 
The Greens got 5.6% of the vote in local elections... if the party in power in the Dail thinks that is a mandate for national policy, then they should hand over the Taoiseach's office to Fianna Fail who got more votes and seats than they did.
 
Same person elected twice to Meath County Council... stood in two different wards... even the Healy Raes haven't tried that scam!
[broken link removed]
 
Interesting to see that Herman Kelly (Irexit Party) struggled to get 2000 votes in the Euro elections. So Ireland’s pretend Nigel (the Fraud) Farage has no support.
 
The Green wave will ebb come the general election. Turnout was under 50% on Friday but should be closer to 70% in the general election. I doubt may Green voters stayed at home.
 
The real fun is on the mainland. Leave with No Deal got 34.9% of the vote while unequivocal Remain parties got 40.4%. So whilst the Fraud can rightly be proud of his personal achievement, the Brexit Party/UKIP vote is only up 7% on 2014 whilst the Lib Dem/Green vote is up 17%. To me this is a vote against Brexit or certainly against No Deal Brexit but boy are they divided.
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
The real fun is on the mainland. Leave with No Deal got 34.9% of the vote while unequivocal Remain parties got 40.4%. So whilst the Fraud can rightly be proud of his personal achievement, the Brexit Party/UKIP vote is only up 7% on 2014 whilst the Lib Dem/Green vote is up 17%. To me this is a vote against Brexit or certainly against No Deal Brexit but boy are they divided.
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None of that happened on the Mainland. It happened in the UK.
 
I think the most interesting of all was in the 6 counties. Alliance getting 1 of the 3 seats. So it splits 1/3rd extreme green, 1/3rd extreme orange and 1/3rd sensible. I think there is a big Brexit factor here. The Ulster Unionists really missed a trick in changing to be Brexit, being afraid of being outflanked by the DUP. The fact is that many unionists, such as farmers, saw the backstop as win-win.
Can't understand the collapse of SF in the Free State. Good to see but I hate to contemplate Grisly wallowing in his self esteem - gone a year and they collapse. What has happened? Is it Mary Lou's objective to enter government?
By and large good news throughout the British Isles with the Green surge the only blight on the landscape.
 
The annoying thing about the green party is it is full of freeloaders with agendas that don't resonate with ordinary people. If common sense green politics were being put forward by sensible people they would be far more electable
 
I think there must be something wrong with how the constituencies are drawn up for the european elections. In dublin the quota was 77,000 votes or there abouts to get elected, however in ireland north west it takes 115,000 votes to reach quota. I know the quota depends on how many people voted on the day but that does not explain the huge difference ,it takes 50% more votes to elect an MEP in ireland north west than in dublin !!, is that not anti democratic in that a dublin vote has more weight than an ireland north west vote. Surely kildare , meath and wicklow should be included in the dublin constituency and then have a "rest of ireland" constituency to make it fairer.
 
joe sod said:
I think there must be something wrong with how the constituencies are drawn up for the european elections. In dublin the quota was 77,000 votes or there abouts to get elected, however in ireland north west it takes 115,000 votes to reach quota. I know the quota depends on how many people voted on the day but that does not explain the huge difference ,it takes 50% more votes to elect an MEP in ireland north west than in dublin !!, is that not anti democratic in that a dublin vote has more weight than an ireland north west vote. Surely kildare , meath and wicklow should be included in the dublin constituency and then have a "rest of ireland" constituency to make it fairer.
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The seats are assigned based on population, not electorate, I think.
Then the turnout was 42% in Dublin versus NW, which further impacts the quota as you note.
I have reverse situation in my local election ward in suburban Dublin, it has 6 seats even though it has 10,000 more electorate than some inner city 7 seaters.
 
Huge number of spoilt votes reported in EU election. About 73,000 or 4% of those who voted

Was this a "protest" vote or just people unable to put 1, 2 ,3 etc on a ballot?
 
It look like some people confused the 2 ballot papers, putting 1,2,3 on one and 4,5,6 on the other. Making the 2nd ballot paper invalid
 
odyssey06 said:
The seats are assigned based on population, not electorate, I think.
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but surely the ratio of population to electorate should be very much similar, it cant be the case that ireland north west has 40% more people that can vote as dublin has in relation to total population. That would mean that dublin has a disproportionate number of under 18year olds, that doesn't make sense. If anything kildare and meath have high proportion of under 18year olds as they are the commuter belt. . I think it is more simply the case that the constituencies have been very badly drawn up, at the very least another county like kildare should have been added to the dublin constituency to even it up and make it fairer.
 
1. Voting in the past few years has become easier than say back before the 1990's. The presence of canvassers at polling stations has gone. Remember the days when candidates were hand-shaking and back clapping people going in to vote and nobody came near them on the way out.

2. I can't remember how many candidates were in the running in both elections, but there were many. I don't know how, but something may have to be done about reducing the amount of candidates. The ballot papers I used were ridiculously lengthy.

3. The non printed press went to town on "difficulties" of placing voting papers through the slit in the tin boxes. I saw no difficulties after I had voted.

4. There was the Divorce referendum too which was hardly advertised beforehand and certainly did not get the attention of political parties that it should have. It appeared to be a poor side show.

5. In Cork, Limerick and Waterford there was a referendum on electing a (Lord) Mayor and paying him/her an inordinate amount. Nobody knew when this is supposed to happen or when. Limerick voted for future elections for Mayor while Waterford and Cork rejected. My own view is that we pay a city manager and county manager and if these were doing their jobs there is no need whatsoever for any Mayor.

6. Protest Voters:- Upwards of 4% of those who voted spoiled their votes. At least, they voted and who is to blame them for spoiling their votes with issues like Ms Bailey's swings and roundabouts. Nearly 50% of the population didn't show up. Perhaps the spoilers and no-shows issued the main message that mná agus fir na hÉireann are fed up with our politics and candidates? - Something for future candidates to take on board.

7. There was the issue of some successful candidates not taking their seats until the UK has exited the EU. It has long appeared that the UK will not exit.

8. There were hackles raised by some complaining that Friday was used instead of Saturday. We had others moaning about the amount of posters used. In Cork all the posters just showed a picture of candidates (probably taken years earlier and airbrushed) and nobody knew whether they were running in the Local or European election.

9. There are seven votes in our house (Cork City) and we had only one candidate who visited the door. Mind you a third of our recycling bin is taken over by useless paper used by most of the candidates.
 
joe sod said:
but surely the ratio of population to electorate should be very much similar, it cant be the case that ireland north west has 40% more people that can vote as dublin has in relation to total population. That would mean that dublin has a disproportionate number of under 18year olds, that doesn't make sense. If anything kildare and meath have high proportion of under 18year olds as they are the commuter belt. . I think it is more simply the case that the constituencies have been very badly drawn up, at the very least another county like kildare should have been added to the dublin constituency to even it up and make it fairer.
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I'm not saying the constituencies have been perfectly drawn up, but I don't think its safe to assume population to electorate ratios as consistent between Dublin and other parts of Ireland.

Dublin has a large proportion of non-Irish citizens, more so than the North West. They are either ineligible or not registered to vote here, and many may not even realise they would be eligible to vote in local or EU elections (if EU citizens).
Dublin might also have less percentage of eligible voters actually bothered to enrol on the voting register, for one reason or another (not interested, frequent house moves etc).
There are also possibly a lot of people who show up in the Dublin population as residents e.g. college students and twenty something renters but who may be registered to vote in their home county.
 
Good quote from Ian O'Doherty:
We may be moving from the traditional paradigm of Old Right versus Old Left and entering a new phase of political conflict - one which could be bluntly described as a fight between those who say they love the planet and those who say they love their country. So, if we learned anything from this election it is that the old order is changing.

www.independent.ie

Ian O'Doherty: 'Europe's political battle forms around new fault line - 'love of your nation' versus 'love of your planet''

In times of uncertainty, it's natural to look for both the bad news and the good. It is, of course, human nature to ask for the bad news first. In the wake of this weekend's European elections, we can safely say that, from an Irish perspective, the bad news is that there is no good news.
www.independent.ie www.independent.ie
 
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