2018 Irish 8th Amendment (Abortion) Referendum

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Poll from last week: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/irish-times-poll-repeal-has-large-but-reduced-lead-1.3497830



https://twitter.com/kevcunningham/status/998145593804455936

see thread for comments on possible reasons for discrepancies.

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That is actually one of the questions that will be asked following the result if this is anything close to true: the No campaign moved in a very... distasteful way towards the end of the campaign and if that exit poll is anything close to the result you would have to think that it demonstrates that the No campaign strategy heavily backfired.  It also demonstrates the power of a positive message in a referendum campaign; in the general area the referendum campaigns that won or did significantly better than they were expected to have been the ones that managed to broadly campaign in a positive light; while those who went negative all of the time tended to struggle.

I still don't believe that it will break the 61% that the Marriage referendum got but even that would be an impressively large figure and demonstrates the overwhelming change that has happened in the country - remember that its only been twenty years since Divorce was legalised and that was as close a referendum as you could get.

What was distasteful?

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That is actually one of the questions that will be asked following the result if this is anything close to true: the No campaign moved in a very... distasteful way towards the end of the campaign and if that exit poll is anything close to the result you would have to think that it demonstrates that the No campaign strategy heavily backfired.  It also demonstrates the power of a positive message in a referendum campaign; in the general area the referendum campaigns that won or did significantly better than they were expected to have been the ones that managed to broadly campaign in a positive light; while those who went negative all of the time tended to struggle.

I still don't believe that it will break the 61% that the Marriage referendum got but even that would be an impressively large figure and demonstrates the overwhelming change that has happened in the country - remember that its only been twenty years since Divorce was legalised and that was as close a referendum as you could get.

What was distasteful?

They ran a very controversial and sloppy campaign. There was an incident where a few pro-lifers were hanging graphic posters of torn up fetuses in public, which caused an uproar from nearly all sides of the debate and actually prompted condemnation from the No camp in order to distance themselves.

Besides that, they really didn't have a message, or a way to appeal to the undecided votes. All they did was scream "dead babies!" and rely on shaming people into voting no, whereas the Yes campaign relied more on the facts and sympathized with women in general.

.

I followed the "No" campaign fairly closely and I don't find that characterization at all accurate.  Yes there was an emphasis on the moral gravity of taking children's lives.  There was also arguments for :
- Not trusting the Oireachtas with complete latitude over abortion laws
- Valuing the lives of the disabled, who are often targets of abortion in other countries
- Arguing that the 8th amendment does not endanger women's lives and that any fixes to policy needed to protect women's health can be made through legislation
- Investment in mothers' needs and urgently needed healthcare in other areas rather than putting those funds toward providing abortion
etc

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Should Roe ever get overturned, I have no doubt US public opinion would start to look a lot more like those results than what we see today.

It's actually the other way around. Ireland remains more anti-abortion than the US; and public opinion in America would need to look more like Ireland's in order to be Roe to be overturned...

Is there any good Irish polling on the public's preferred abortion policy? I.e. X weeks limit, exceptions for Y &Z etc.

From a Jas post elsewhere:

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I would imagine that well over 70% of Americans back abortion-on-demand up to 12 weeks...

I don't think that's right with regard to America.

If only half of Irish voters support abortion-on-demand up to 12 weeks, even though the government ran on that as its stated policy to implement once 8th is repealed...  I suppose that's one silver lining in terms of the Irish moral compass not so far gone perhaps as it looked from the vote itself.

Thanks btw Antonio on relaying Nathan's comment.

Do anyone know if there are any results reported at the sub-constituency level?

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I've never understood why people follow a religion and then don't pay attention to the teachings of the religion they follow.  But I'm not Catholic.

Anyway, I wonder how the protestants voted.

Well, the one place that voted No was the most Protestant part of the country

Not surprising. Catholics tend to be more liberal and open to change.

That isn't really what that means.  Donegal is the most Protestant area of Ireland at about 8%, but
about 80% Catholic (making it a bit more Catholic than the Republic of Ireland as a whole at this point).    The population is relatively old and religious, with some holding on to the traditional Gaelic tongue.

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Does Ireland publish results by electoral divisions or anything smaller than the 40 constituencies?