Irish Politics

SER19 said:
Sorry to both of you - I shouldnt have posted in current events, its something I actively try to avoid and want to keep football and engagement with it as a sporting outlet, so I'm not going to stay in Current Events any longer - that's not a reflection on either poster, I just shouldnt have entered at all.

My best summation on points here, this being my opinion only:

Media- A huge percentage of the electorate seem to believe the media is biased against them. All the further-right lunatics think RTE is some sort of extreme left flag waving cess pit. And then the further left seem to see it as some sort of cynical men in suits brigade. There is huge amounts of confirmation bias involved, you need only see peoples thoughts during a TV debate - Sinn Fein supporters actively believing moderators are being harder and interrupting Mary Lou, non sinn-feiners believing the exact opposite. In a 100 year history, Im sure the 2 largest parties are in some way better connected, but I really do think one has to be living in a world of real confirmation bias to think there is any notable, active bias. It is in danger of becoming active delusion, where we all end up like the far-right, shouting about paedophiles in a Dail basement.

Sinn Fein 'collapse' - this word seems to have irritated. At almost any point in the course of the last Dail, had the election been held, Sinn Fein wouldnt just have been the 'biggest party' (0.5% lead in an exit poll), they would have comfortably been the biggest party. Their polling numbers at one point not long ago were huge. And in that time, the government has hardly rallied - you each point out enormous failures. If we're not going to turn around and say that there has been an enormous lost opportunity for Sinn Fein, then thats where we're actually being disingenous. How they have managed to go from such resounding polling, against the likes of McEntee and some of the most unpopular individuals to occupy high positions, and still not be close to forming a government, needs to be looked at. My own opinion is that they sacrificed their opportunity in the name of one, single issue. A final point on the 'largest party' thing. On the one hand Sinn Fein seem to want to say that FFFG are just an interchangable cosy cabal - if that's the case, then this FFFG single party is by far and away the largest party. Sinn Fein cant just lump them together as one when its convenient, then split them when it comes to polls. The sitting government has likely got about 44% of first preference votes.

The Left - Ireland is a left wing country. To look at things that have occurred under current government, and come to any conclusion other than them being left wing would be bizarre. We are generally a progressive country, and the 2 largest parties hold left or left-leaning stances on almost every issue. What you seem to want (or some people rather than you specifically) is a more-left government. Okay, that's a fair desire. So then we turn and look at who is there. Sinn Fein - getting a sizable number of votes. And who? Boyd Barrett? Paul Murphy? Bacik and Labour? What the further left never seems to recognise is that they live in an echo chamber as much as they far right lunatics do. Go to most of rural Ireland and it doesn't take long to see how hopelessly out of touch the alternative left are. For the overwhelming majority of this country, these characters are just as unvotable as the right wing nuts. But the left never seem to want to engage with this idea - they seem to project that they know best and if only the stupid electorate would give them a chance they'd prove them right. There is a delusion among the alternative left about what's important to people, and I don't expect they will ever ever have the humility to take stock of why they are unpopular.

Lastly on the left - one success has been the seemingly good return from SD. But like the Greens, I suspect that should Cairns see it as a chance to implement any bit of influence, rather than stay on the sidelines, they will be committing political suicide by forming a government with FFFG, because deep down the alternative left are professional, masters of victimhood. They sustain themselves on the idea of being oppressed and would rather stay there, cheering on Boyd Barrets deranged howling, than see incremental growth. The reason FFFG are still comfrtable despite underperforming, is because the left will continue to eat itself.

In any case, that really is just the opinion of one fool on the internet. Should we be in a social setting or pub, Id happily get into it all and I bet we actually agree on about 95% of things. But as I said, Im going to tap out of current events, Ive written this as I didnt want to be dismissive of your posts.
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Great post - I'd argue against the government in sitting being "left", whatever that is any more, but you've articulated your views very well.
 
neverdie said:
No. Not even remotely. The Dems are not a left wing party in any sense. There is no mirror to be had. They also cannot blame the media for being against them when much of the media landscape is in their favour. The Democrats are as establishment as establishment gets in the US. There isn't a comparison to be had.
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My post was longer than what you've quoted. Stop doing that, please.
 
moses said:
Just for the record, I'm a member of two political parties, neither of which are SF. I just see them as a great opportunity and more than deserving of a chance, as they may instigate much needed change.
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I'm not a member of any political party, I agree that the need for change is obvious, I just don't see SF as credible at all. I voted SD, Green, Independent. Green got included only due to long term anxiety that my kids will burn.

The bottom line is that our choices are shite. I don't really subscribe to left/right ideology as I think different issues need different solutions. If we could get the best 15 politicians to just run the place regardless of party, we would be miles better off.
 
Gee Male said:
My post was longer than what you've quoted. Stop doing that, please.
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I'm quoting key parts. It's not like people can't read the thread or link back to the primary post.

The key part is the false analogy - for me. I just didn't see the merit in quoting the whole post. The idea that doing that, quoting a key part of the text, is wrong or something is irritating to say the least.
 
SER19 said:
To look at things that have occurred under current government, and come to any conclusion other than them being left wing would be bizarre
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People before profit are a left-wing party. FFG are not. To pretend that FFG are left wing is more than a stretch. It's imaginary.
 
Housing and homelessness were the biggest issues according to exit polls (for SF).

Then cost of living.

Interesting.
 
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RTE have an exit poll split by age.

As you would expect SF are more popular amongst the 18-35 age groups, up on 30-40%.
Goes down to 20% from 35-49. Aged 50 and above FF/FG take over as being more popular with approx 50% combined, this goes up to 55% for over 65s.

neverdie said:
Housing and homelessness were the biggest issues according to exit polls.

Then cost of living.

Interesting.
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Cost of living is ridiculous alright.

A pound of butter is nearly €4, what else are we supposed to put on the shpuds? Not one canvasser around me had anything to say about it, it was all immigration this and that.
 
Oranges038 said:
RTE have an exit poll split by age.

As you would expect SF are more popular amongst the 18-35 age groups, up on 30-40%.
Goes down to 20% from 35-49. Aged 50 and above FF/FG take over as being more popular with approx 50% combined, this goes up to 55% for over 65s.



Cost of living is ridiculous alright.

A pound of butter is nearly €4, what else are we supposed to put on the shpuds? Not one canvasser around me had anything to say about it, it was all immigration this and that.
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Some 35% of poll respondents said Micheál Martin, 34% said Mary Lou McDonald, while 27% said they would like to see Fine Gael leader Simon Harris as the next taoiseach.

That's an interesting poll. It doesn't really break for FFG until 65 plus. It's just party leader preference.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/1130/1483886-standard-of-living-has-worsened-in-past-year-exit-poll/
 
Oranges038 said:
RTE have an exit poll split by age.

As you would expect SF are more popular amongst the 18-35 age groups, up on 30-40%.
Goes down to 20% from 35-49. Aged 50 and above FF/FG take over as being more popular with approx 50% combined, this goes up to 55% for over 65s.



Cost of living is ridiculous alright.

A pound of butter is nearly €4, what else are we supposed to put on the shpuds? Not one canvasser around me had anything to say about it, it was all immigration this and that.
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PBP have a policy to counter the cost of living crisis.
 
Raven said:
If that's the case and FFG are back in, I just don't know if it's worth voting anymore.
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It was for SF voters. For FF it was housing and I think healthcare or something.

But housing was a major issue. And, I don't know. We need more data.
 
Raven said:
PBP have a policy to counter the cost of living crisis.
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Not one of them were round my way.

Immigration is the biggest thing they focused on around me, because of where we live and how a certain Monaghan man is buying up every property going across the area to keep his big fat government contracts rolling in.
 
moses said:
No candidates here. Also not angry enough to be decent opposition. That said from reading here you just get called populist for actually highlighting the problems.




Overall the expected outcome. I did secretly hope the electorate would do something great and unexpected.

Calling Sinn Fein populist and accusing them of not doing the costings is just so lazy and cliched. Nobody mentions costings with any other party, but suddenly everyone knows how the department of finance works. It's literally the same thing said to every left wing party in western democracies in modern times. Even the democrats fill that role in the US.

As for uninspiring leadership being the reason SF didn't get more votes. She is streets ahead of the her two direct opponents.

I still think that on the ground, the emergence of the right ate into their base, which again is very common in western democracies.

Ireland is not ready for change. Sometimes it's about moments and SF definitely missed theirs last time out. Maybe people did just see it as a protest vote last time but were glad they didn't get in.

If the trends in other countries are followed we will see a far right growth as anyone socialist is constantly attacked. Even in the UK Corbyn was set upon the way Keir isn't.

People are actually scared of change and conservative at heart.
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This was my earlier point about stuff like housing and health only being show stopping problems for a section of people. The country overall is doing 'well', and most working people as they get older eventually get a house, and the health system eventually works for most people(or works fine if you're lucky enough to have insurance). Pair that with some solutions being proposed that sound too good to be true and it's easy to see why a lot of people don't want to completely rock the boat.

It's not like we're in America or the UK where there are a load of culture war type issues separating the main candidates that would encourage splits.
 
RedC said:
The country overall is doing 'well',
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Its GDP is doing well. Indeed, by other metrics it's also doing well. The dissonance is that for a country doing so well to have declared, just yesterday, that homelessness has hit a new record as well as the housing crisis. I mean the housing crisis is mental. And the cost of living is compounded by all this. Take dentists and medical cards. Good look getting one if you have a medical card. Now, neurology and other healthcare aspects: years of waiting. For a new GP if you have to leave your county to find housing, again, good luck. All inundated and backed all the way up.
 
Just watching the news.

The was confusion over the Limerick voting tickets as the candidates weren't in alphabetical order, Q came before O. There could be legal potential legal challenges to the validity of the votes after this.
 
neverdie said:
Its GDP is doing well. Indeed, by other metrics it's also doing well. The dissonance is that for a country doing so well to have declared, just yesterday, that homelessness has hit a new record as well as the housing crisis. I mean the housing crisis is mental. And the cost of living is compounded by all this. Take dentists and medical cards. Good look getting one if you have a medical card. Now, neurology and other healthcare aspects: years of waiting. For a new GP if you have to leave your county to find housing, again, good luck. All inundated and backed all the way up.
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Again, my point is that these things aren't impacting everyone, so you really need to do a good job of convincing those that are impacted to turn up and vote for you, and an even better job of convincing people that aren't impacted that you can fix these problems without changing things negatively for them.

It would also help to not have bomb makers and pedos floating about getting exposed every so often, when most people are just looking for something to justify not voting for your party.
 
RedC said:
It would also help to not have bomb makers and pedos floating about getting exposed every so often, when most people are just looking for something to justify not voting for your party.
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ffs. The entire FFG government knew about the Catholic Church scandal and swept it under the rug. Pedos? There were so many thousands of cases under their rule that you cannot even fecking count them.

I don't disagree that it's not exactly great for optics but the FFG is a pedo operation if we want to use this rhetoric based on how they enabled the CC to do what it did. Then the care home scandals where abuse was also known and again damn near impossible to count how many people that affected.

It is also impacting everyone just to lesser degrees. But I take your first point.
 
neverdie said:
ffs. The entire FFG government knew about the Catholic Church scandal and swept it under the rug. Pedos? There were so many thousands of cases under their rule that you cannot even fecking count them.

I don't disagree that it's not exactly great for optics but the FFG is a pedo operation if we want to use this rhetoric based on how they enabled the CC to do what it did. Then the care home scandals where abuse was also known and again damn near impossible to count how many people that affected.

It is also impacting everyone just to lesser degrees. But I take your first point.
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I didn't say the other parties aren't shite and have loads of skeletons as well, I'm saying that you basically need to be squeaky clean if you're SF and looking to get new votes, because of the stigma associated with the party.

It is impacting everyone in some way, but if you're not that motivated or politically switched on, and it's not the main problem in your life, it's not really going to make you go out and vote for a specific party.
 
RedC said:
It is impacting everyone in some way, but if you're not that motivated or politically switched on, and it's not the main problem in your life, it's not really going to make you go out and vote for a specific party.
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Agree with you on this.

RedC said:
you basically need to be squeaky clean if you're SF and looking to get new votes, because of the stigma associated with the party.
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Also agree with this. They're held to a much a higher standard because of historical reasons.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Can someone explain why so much faith is put in exit polls? How can a survey of a few thousand people accurately predict the votes of hundreds of thousands of people?
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It is hit and miss. But the calculus is usually not that far away. England is particularly good at it. The Americans (cannot even call that an exit poll) and the Irish (there's just not enough nuance in the information breakdown) are nowhere near as good. The BBC exit poll at 10pm every GE is almost always perfect with a small margin of error. Not so in Ireland and as the US poll is just a survey of people's attitudes it tells you nothing (doesn't even ask who they voted for).

The transfer mechanism here requires much more political science nuance for the exit poll to be less than 2-3% in margin of error which it was last time. It's a messy system but the second and third preferences and then an extrapolation as to how that affects what will be the largest party in terms of seats should not be that hard.

tl;dr

whilst it's a tiny amount of people, it is filtered in mathematical scales to be, or try to be, representative by weighting.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Can someone explain why so much faith is put in exit polls? How can a survey of a few thousand people accurately predict the votes of hundreds of thousands of people?
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Whatever about in a 2 party system, I feel like they're probably not amazing for something like ours?
 
neverdie said:
It is hit and miss. But the calculus is usually not that far away. England is particularly good at it. The Americans (cannot even call that an exit poll) and the Irish (there's just not enough nuance in the information breakdown) are nowhere near as good. The BBC exit poll at 10pm every GE is almost always perfect with a small margin of error. Not so in Ireland and as the US poll is just a survey of people's attitudes it tells you nothing (doesn't even ask who they voted for).
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So we take it with a massive pinch of salt and the real result could be very different?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
So we take it with a massive pinch of salt and the real result could be very different?
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SF were underestimated by more than 2% by this exit poll (only 1000 people last time, 5000 this time) last time out. Entirely possible that it's wide of the mark. It is expected to be 1.3% wide of whatever the result is, but I think it's likely to be twice that (minimally).
 
neverdie said:
SF were underestimated by more than 2% by this exit poll (only 1000 people last time, 5000 this time) last time out. Entirely possible that it's wide of the mark. It is expected to be 1.3% wide of whatever the result is, but I think it's likely to be twice that (minimally).
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Even 1 or 2% is still a much smaller margin of error than you’d think from such a small sample size? Mind you, statistics is all basically voodoo to me. Only ever had a cursory understanding.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Even 1 or 2% is still a much smaller margin of error than you’d think from such a small sample size? Mind you, statistics is all basically voodoo to me. Only ever had a cursory understanding.
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It's like polling in general. The reason exit polls are held high, and it does depend on the nation and its system, is because it asks people not what their intent is but who they have just literally voted for. You do that around the 44 constituencies and then extrapolate the data and weight it. It's entirely valid (the 5000) number but only if the calculus is actually correct. A small mistake in the calculus leads to a potentially enormous variance in the result. So it is wait and see.
 
It ought to be done the way the British do it too. The count should go into the night. Beginning immediately. I don't like this delayed counting process.

You'd basically be able to see where it's at by now in terms of real results relative to the exit poll. But no, we have to wait all day.
 
neverdie said:
It ought to be done the way the British do it too. The count should go into the night. Beginning immediately. I don't like this delayed counting process.

You'd basically be able to see where it's at by now in terms of real results relative to the exit poll. But no, we have to wait all day.
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Most of the counters will have been working their normal jobs yesterday, and will put in a long few days this weekend. Expecting them to work through the night isn’t realistic.
 
moses said:
As it stands the exit polls are as predicted and expected. It's quite interesting that it's so close to the pre election polls. We are who we are and that's quite a conservative bunch. Vote for no change and complain about for 5 years. Phew, back to normal.
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We’ll summed up yup
 
RexHamilton said:
Most of the counters will have been working their normal jobs yesterday, and will put in a long few days this weekend. Expecting them to work through the night isn’t realistic.
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They do it in other nations. It's entirely realistic. It's the common thing in most other democracies. You'd have relief teams and so on.
 
RexHamilton said:
Most of the counters will have been working their normal jobs yesterday, and will put in a long few days this weekend. Expecting them to work through the night isn’t realistic.
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They get paid well enough for it. So it's shouldn't be unexpected.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Even 1 or 2% is still a much smaller margin of error than you’d think from such a small sample size? Mind you, statistics is all basically voodoo to me. Only ever had a cursory understanding.
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@Massive Spanner posted this explainer earlier.

https://www.rte.ie/news/election-24/2024/1129/1483809-exit-polls/

The Exit polls aren't usually that far off. There is a minimal sample size calculation to ensure confidence in the results of any survey but the sample isn't actually that high.
 
Gee Male said:
Great post - I'd argue against the government in sitting being "left", whatever that is any more, but you've articulated your views very well.
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That's a fundamental error though and a massively incorrect starting point.
 
neverdie said:
It ought to be done the way the British do it too. The count should go into the night. Beginning immediately. I don't like this delayed counting process.

You'd basically be able to see where it's at by now in terms of real results relative to the exit poll. But no, we have to wait all day.
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I wouldn't be in favour of anyone working through the night, but especially not when it's only to appease peoples' impatience.
 
Massive Spanner said:
Yep, as usual passionate old people who are happy with the status who have turned up to the polls and young people who want change haven’t bothered. Turnout is so low.
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I wouldn't say that's necessarily fair on the olds, the main opposition party being SF is probably a pretty big road block. Maybe they aren't particularly happy with the status, but don't believe in the main alternative? Anecdotally I've come across a few old people that seem to believe that there's no point in voting for a party that aren't going to be able to do anything also.
 
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