Irish general election, 26th Feb 2016

[ObserverIE]

Minor parties (which have polled extremely well this Dail) include the Greens (evicted from the Dail following their doomed coalition with FF); several far-left outfits (of which the most important are Socialist Party front group the Anti Austerity Alliance, Socialist Worker Front group People Before Profit and Tipperary based one-man band WUAG); Renua Ireland, a vague centre-right grouping formed by former FG TD Lucinda Creighton; the Independent Alliance (not a party) a loosely affiliated group of local heroes led by popular Independent Shane Ross and the new Social Democrats, a centre-left split of dissident Ex-labour TD's.

The Greens haven't polled well at all, actually. I'd go with deeppink for the SP trading as AAA and fuchsia for the SWP trading as PBP (if nothing else yellow is impossible to read). Navy seems appropriate for Renua as a more right-wing splinter of the Irish Tory Party, and the Social Democrats are using purple (and they're not all ex-Labour).

[ObserverIE]

What are the chances of a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail Coalition?  Labour has recovered from their depths in recent months

Only to the extent of moving from 5-6% to 7-8%.

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Certainly FG are not going to play second fiddle to their social inferiors.

[ObserverIE]

Huh, Fianna Fail are coming up with a Basic Income policy of all things. I suppose they're tacking to the left?

There isn't any room to the right of Fine Gael economically so FF end up as lefties in comparison.

[ObserverIE]

In their infinite wisdom, Fianna Fáil are adding Sean Haughey back into the Dublin Bay North mix; in what looks like an explosive mixture of egos,nincluding (so far) Haughey, the FF councillor he was beaten by, tobacco loving commie Finian McGrath, jilted Fianna Fáil senator Averil Power, a sitting Labour Minister of State, ex-Labour TD Tommy Broughan, a former Fine Garl Lord Mayor of Dublin, Richard Bruton the FG minister who attempted to oust Enda Kenny in 2010 and a Renua TD. How do you fit all that lot in a five-seater?

You don't.

FF are being pragmatic here; Haughey is the best-known candidate and is the most likely to win them a seat.

SF will also be aiming for a seat here (although they may not be helped by a gender-balanced two-candidate ticket) as will be the two factions of the Alphabet Left. Power may get media coverage (being married to the editor of a national newspaper helps in that) but is unlikely to figure for the seat share-out. The Labour minister mentioned above is the perpetually-anguished and hyper-politically correct Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.

[ObserverIE]

Just a question about preferences - do most voters fully rank every single candidate?

From tallying at last year's local elections, the answer is No. I would expect maybe half to two-thirds of candidates to be ranked on the average ballot paper. You will get a good many "plumpers" who will only preference a small number of candidates.

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Intra-party transfers are much less strong than they used to be. SF and the Alphabet Left (when they're running more than one candidate) tend to be very loyal in terms of keeping their initial transfers within the party, other parties much less so. (FF traditionally would also have had a high degree of transfer loyalty, but it weakened during the Ahern years.) A lot of voters will transfer to other candidates from the same geographical area ahead of more distant party running-mates.

[ObserverIE]

Rumour going round (started by Ivan Yates, ex-FG minister and radio host on DinnyNewstalk) of the election being called for November 20 so as to avoid the inevitable winter cluster over issues like the state of hospitals.

[ObserverIE]

http://irishpoliticalmaps.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/confirmed-candidates-for-next-general_3.html

Cool maps I founded the nominated candidates so far. Also the two major trot groups have merged, or something?

They've formed a marriage of convenience for the duration of the election campaign. Hostilities will be resumed in the aftermath.

[ObserverIE]

There was a big rumpus last week at the FF conference over gender quotas, or something.

All parties need to have a minimum of 30% of their candidates to be female in order to receive matching state funding after the next election. Both FF and FG have been having occasional selection problems as a result.

There are two rows going on in FF over constituency parties effectively having particular female candidates imposed on them by HQ supposedly to fill the gender quota.

The first, which is going to law, is in Dublin Central - Bertie Ahern's old stomping ground - where the female candidate (Mary Fitzpatrick) has been a long-term opponent of the Ahern machine. Ahern himself is totally discredited and resigned from FF before they got the chance to expel him, but the remnants of his machine have been trying to thwart Fitzpatrick's selection by putting up virtual unknowns against her. One of these unknowns (the son of a mate of Ahern's) is now taking a court case to try to have the gender quota legislation declared unconstitutional.

The second row is in Longford, which is my own home area.

Longford forms part of the larger Longford-Westmeath constituency which elects 4 TDs (currently 2 FG, 1 FF, 1 Lab). FF, traditionally dominant here, managed to scrape the last seat last time with the least-known of a three-candidate ticket. The newcomer TD has since moved to consolidate his position within the party, firstly by ensuring that there would be only one FF candidate from Westmeath (himself) along with one candidate from Longford, and then by ensuring that the Longford FF candidate would present no internal threat to him. Accordingly a complete unknown put herself forward at the last moment for the FF nomination in Longford along with two much stronger male candidates. FF HQ then issued a directive on the morning of the selection convention that the selected candidate must be female, and the female unknown was declared on the night as being automatically selected without the supposed selectorate being given any say. The local FF organisation are in a mutinous mood and the "selected" candidate is refusing to speak to local media, forwarding all interview requests to FF HQ.

The winners of this episode are Robert Troy (sitting FF TD) and James Bannon (idiot FG TD for Longford whose path to re-election has been assured).

[ObserverIE]

I only just started paying attention to this election, and I have a question. It looks like Sinn Fein are polling in a strong third place and they seem pretty set to be the main left-of-centre party in the next Dail. Has Sinn Fein ever held such a strong position, and what are the implications if the polls stand?

Part 1 of your question: No.

Part 2 of your question: The media and political establishment in the Republic are doing their utmost to damage SF. Labour and FF are trying, as best they can, to put the boot into a perceived threat to their support bases. We will probably get a FG government propped up by FF at the behest of the previously-mentioned establishment to keep the barbarians from the gate.

[ObserverIE]

Any chance Gerry Adams steps down to let someone untainted (both of terrorism and "I knew my brother raped my niece and I didn't do squat about it") like Mary Lou McDonald lead them into the election?

No.

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Probably less than you would think. SF could select Aung San Suu Kyi as leader and the groups who detest SF would still detest SF. The Adams who was never in the IRA is also the Adams who is seen as having helped to stop the war.

[ObserverIE]

Any chance Gerry Adams steps down to let someone untainted (both of terrorism and "I knew my brother raped my niece and I didn't do squat about it") like Mary Lou McDonald lead them into the election?

No.

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Probably less than you would think. SF could select Aung San Suu Kyi as leader and the groups who detest SF would still detest SF. The Adams who was never in the IRA is also the Adams who is seen as having helped to stop the war.

Okay, thanks for the answer.

Isn't it generally assumed by almost everyone that he was in the IRA?

Yes.

But the result of him actually admitting it would be a wave of synthetic outrage from the usual suspects North and South and another likely arrest like the one in the run-up to last year's local and European elections. IRA membership is still an indictable offence.

[ObserverIE]

Any chance Gerry Adams steps down to let someone untainted (both of terrorism and "I knew my brother raped my niece and I didn't do squat about it") like Mary Lou McDonald lead them into the election?

No.

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Probably less than you would think. SF could select Aung San Suu Kyi as leader and the groups who detest SF would still detest SF. The Adams who was never in the IRA is also the Adams who is seen as having helped to stop the war.

Okay, thanks for the answer.

Isn't it generally assumed by almost everyone that he was in the IRA?

Yes.

But the result of him actually admitting it would be a wave of synthetic outrage from the usual suspects North and South and another likely arrest like the one in the run-up to last year's local and European elections. IRA membership is still an indictable offence.

Yeah, the lack of a general amnesty was a weakness in the GFA (also leading to absurdities like Chief-of-Staff Martin McGuinness officially dropping out back in 1974...). A South African style Truth and Reconciliation-process would have been much better. 

I just wondered why you didn't put it as "who was never in the IRA", so had to ask.

I was using the standard formula.

[ObserverIE]

I mean, why would anyone have a reason to dislike the IRA or its "alleged" former(?) leader. What fakers.

Sounds more like a secret austerity plot to me, probably Zionist in nature.

Let me put it this way.

When SF were polling 5-6% of the vote during the 2000s (and the IRA's violence was a lot more recent), there wasn't anything like the intensity of outrage coming from the Republic's establishment that there is now.

[ObserverIE]

I mean, why would anyone have a reason to dislike the IRA or its "alleged" former(?) leader. What fakers.

Sounds more like a secret austerity plot to me, probably Zionist in nature.

Let me put it this way.

When SF were polling 5-6% of the vote during the 2000s (and the IRA's violence was a lot more recent), there wasn't anything like the intensity of outrage coming from the Republic's establishment that there is now.

Well duh. When fringey ideas/parties (or even non-fringey ones) become popular, people opposed to them will also start speaking out against them more.

No. The difference is that they're now perceived as being a real threat to "the way things are done here" where they weren't seen as such before, and the crash and its aftermath has made "the way things are done here" more vulnerable to public resentment in the first place.

(Ironically, I suspect that if SF were to actually get into power things would change a great deal less than their detractors fear or their supporters hope.)

[ObserverIE]

February 26 is considered most likely.

Any later would interfere with the traditional ministerial junkets to Washington and other foreign parts for St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

[ObserverIE]

Does anyone else feel this term has gone by faster than the previous one, even though this term has lasted over a year longer already?  It may just be that I haven't been following things as much, and it could also be because there was never any danger of this government being forced into an early election via loss of confidence, which there was for the previous government.  There also hasn't been a change in Taoiseach since this term began.  Anyway, I'm happy that another Irish election will soon be upon us.

Speaking as someone at the sharp end of it, the sheer succession of disasters between September 2008 and December 2010 made things feel longer even if they weren't.

[ObserverIE]

Also:

Oooohh!! Aaaaghhh!! Scary left-wingers!!!

Labour. We're desperate.

[ObserverIE]

Also:

Oooohh!! Aaaaghhh!! Scary left-wingers!!!

Labour. We're desperate.

Can someone tell me who the people in that picture are (besides Gerry Adams, which was obvious, although I'm sure most if not all of them were just as obvious to the Irish Forumites) and what party each belong to?  If the only parties represented were Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil (it looks like Adams's groom in the picture might be FF leader Micheál Martin), it could be more anti-Sinn Féin (with the implication that Fianna Fáil might govern with them, and perhaps bringing up Fianna Fáil's "Sinn Féin-lite" past (thinking of Charles Haughey here)) than anti-leftist.  But the woman in the picture looks like Clare Daly, and if she's in there than it's tough to see it as at least partly a "red scare" type ad (as opposed to just a "green scare" type ad, although perhaps the term "green scare" doesn't work as well in the Republic as in NI).  Is there anything controversial about any of the non-Shinners in the photo on the "green" front?

From left to right (physically speaking), it's Richard Boyd Barrett (SWP t/a PBP), Paul Murphy (SP t/a AAA), Adams, Martin, Worzel GummidgeMick Wallace, and apparently a waxwork of Clare Daly.

It's meant to be both a "green scare" (for both shades of green) and a "red scare". This is Irish Labour we're talking about here, after all, a party whose highest ambition is to spend the next five years as FG's doormat.

[ObserverIE]

RTÉ's election website here.

[ObserverIE]

Phelan should be the safest of the three - it seems to me a pretty close call between Deering and Fitzgerald for the other seat.

Deering has less competition in Carlow - only FF's Murnane-O'Connor and the SWP's Wallace.

[ObserverIE]

How do parties decide how many candidates to run? It looks like there is a trade off between running enough people to win additional seats and 'leakage' in preferencing.

As a rough rule of thumb: (number of secure quotas) + 1, although larger parties may often run extra candidates in a constituency which is geographically large or with a number of poles of attraction, e.g. in Carlow-Kilkenny the poles are Carlow, Kilkenny city/north Kilkenny, and south Kilkenny and the two traditional large parties are running candidates in each of those regions (Deering/Murnane-O'Connor, Fitzgerald/McGuinness, Phelan/Aylward).

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https://books.google.ie/books?id=26_5_BQ_auoC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=battle+of+tang+o%27rourke+reynolds&source=bl&ots=ncr_be50C1&sig=3fNF8vw7qOptc8ROiAEAijd-qtI&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=battle%20of%20tang%20o%27rourke%20reynolds&f=false

Quite a bit...

[ObserverIE]

Cavan-Monaghan loses a substantial part of East Cavan to the Sligo-Leitrim constituency, and with it one of its seats to become a 4-seater constituency.

West and a substantial bit of mid-Cavan actually, going in a drunken line from Lough Gowna on the Longford border up to beyond Belturbet on the Fermanagh border.

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He still has the rest of Cavan to himself where he had to share it with a west Cavan candidate (McVitty) last time. He's also spent enough time cultivating the Hibernian vote in Cavan to be able to appeal to a certain element of FG voter in Monaghan.

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Smith actually loses his home territory in the Panhandle and may be vulnerable to Smyth in Cavan (this is going to confuse the hell out of outsiders) and if Durkan is a complete unknown she might be able to pick up votes across the border in south Monaghan (though you would be a better judge of that than I).

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Calling the Pope "the Antichrist" was a bit too off-the-wall for even the most conservative mainstream Catholics.

[ObserverIE]

Even their supposed HISTORIC COMEBACK(tm) during the locals is imho exaggerated by the lack of non-FF/FG candidates in many rural counties and a stronger focus on local issues than they will be in the GE (plus a greater incumbency factor than there will be this time around).

On the first point, there was generally no shortage of non-FF/FG candidates (mainly independents) in most rural counties.

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It will, I think, simply be that FG and Lab will have p*ssed off enough voters for FF to be relatively less toxic than they were in 2011 and that in itself should move them to the high twenties/low thirties without much of an improvement in their own vote. 22-23 strikes me as being much too low. I'd give them the two seats Jas has pencilled in already plus Sligo-Leitrim, Kerry, Tipperary, Waterford, the two Meath seats, Dublin Bay North and Dublin Fingal as an absolute minimum, although they'll most likely lose a seat gained through defection in Galway East.

[ObserverIE]

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http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/miriam-lord-taoiseach-drops-hints-as-d%C3%A1il-s-end-nears-1.2511558

It would, of course, massively inconvenience students and young people working away from home to hold the election on a Thursday rather than a Friday.

Students or the sheepskin-coat-and-brandy brigade? Which group is more likely to vote for the Blueshirts?

[ObserverIE]

(Perchance this may be why Cork NW is the only constituency the Communist Party of Ireland has nominated a candidate for so far...)

How dare you question the hunger of the oppressed masses of Rockchapel and Millstreet to be liberated from the chains of capitalism and express their unbridled solidarity with the glorious liberation struggle of Red Donbass.

(The CPI make the KKE look like a bunch of backsliding Blairites.)