The other byelections… October 10, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Politics.3 comments
…on the other side of the Irish Sea. There’ll be no end of stuff about the UKIP win in Clacton and the close enough, but not quite, showing in Middleton – how UKIP can now strike deep into Labour heartlands. And yet two points need to be made immediately. Firstly these were byelections – general elections are a whole different ballgame, and come on foot of remarkably positive coverage of UKIP in recent times. Secondly the Labour vote actually increased in Middleton slightly, and did so without running a campaign that mentioned immigration. And there’s this:
Despite Ukip’s declarations that “the dam has burst”, elections analyst Prof John Curtice said Heywood and Middleton showed that Ukip can come “a very good second”, but winning is another matter.
And as to what UKIP might feasibly win at the next GE?
…pollsters YouGov, for example, believe the party could win 10 – including Nigel Farage in Thanet South, Diane James in Eastleigh, along with a half a dozen between the Humber and the English Channel.
And the thinking is that with UKIP impacting on Tories, and the SNP on Labour ‘leave both Labour and the Conservatives with roughly equal numbers of MPs’ and with the LD’s in trouble it’s minority government ahead. Again, we’ll see.
The CLR Political Quiz …Number 77.. Dublin South West/ Roscommon Leitrim special October 10, 2014
Posted by irishelectionliterature in CLR Political Quiz.2 comments
1. Which former Roscommon TD had a spell as Paris Correspondent and also US Correspondent for the Sunday Times?
2. Which Leitrim based TD was shot dead in 1932 ?
3. Sinn Fein Dublin South West candidate Cathal King was initially co-opted onto South Dublin County Council to replace who?
4. The son of which former Roscommon TD stood in the last Dublin South West By-Election in 1976 ?
5. Name the AAA Councillors in Dublin South West?
6. Which candidate in the current by-election had a father who was a TD for Dublin South West?
7. Who were the ‘Ming’ backed candidates in Roscommon in this years local elections?
8. Which former President stood twice without success in Dublin South West ?
9. Who was the last Leitrim based MEP?
10. Who is this?
This Week At Irish Election Literature October 10, 2014
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Irish Election Literature Blog.add a comment
With the two By Elections today…
Leaflets from Dublin South West
includes FF wanting a ‘fairer’ Water Tax , a bizarre one on Civil Marriage and more….
and Leaflets from Roscommon South Leitrim
And perhaps she does too… October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.1 comment so far
Ms Burton said all the protestors she had seen seemed to have “extremely expensive phones, tablets and video cameras” and there had been extensive filming of every second of these actions.
She said a core part of the campaign was to video every single second . “There has been the most extensive filming in relation to any of these actions than I have ever seen anywhere. Hollywood would be in the ha’penny place.”
When pretty much every mobile can take reasonably high quality film, when tablets are if not quite ubiquitous at least getting there – in part fuelled by schemes in schools where they’re distributed ‘free’ (another day’s discussion by the by) and when video camera’s are relatively inexpensive (and the issue of believing it necessary to record Garda actions)… look, why am I even bothering? The palpable sense of detachment from what life is like out here – and indeed the deliberate or otherwise link back to the sort of rhetoric that is of a piece with attacks on the unemployed for having flat screen televisions…
He knows his base… October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.add a comment
From this the IT this evening:
With speculation mounting ahead of the first budget to offer the Government potential manoeuvrability, Taoiseach Enda Kenny cautioned that the “chorus of calls” to abolish various charges and taxes would amount to “economic and social madness”.
And yet…
[he] has said next week’s budget will see the first step in reducing the 52 per cent tax on low and middle income earners, a rate he said has only hampered job creation.
Serendipity… October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.add a comment
…from today’s IT on the web…
Protected domains? October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.add a comment
Reading the SBP editorial this weekend – and a sterling defence it was too of the Irish multinational tax policy, if ever I read one – I was struck by the following:
Other countries have their protected domains. Britain has its City financial tax issue. France has its farm subsidies. Germany has its austerity diktat. Ireland has technology companies.
They have become national, strategic assets in Ireland, as important to Dublin as agriculture and tourism are to rural countries.
That Irish Times poll… October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.7 comments
As noted earlier, there’s only two shifts in the poll outside the margin of error, a slide for FF and a rise for SF. The Labour Party is 2% up but that’s again well within the MOE and small recompense for changing their leader. IEL asked, tongue in cheek, yesterday whether it might be time for a leadership change in the LP. But he could be right! And M. Martin will be having a most uncomfortable day or two, in advance of the byelections, while SF is probably delighted. And so should Ind/Others be.
IEL has noted that the projections from Adrian Kavanagh posit the following outcome on the poll.
Adrian Kavanaghs take…..
Fianna Fail 34, Fine Gael 45, Sinn Fein 41, Labour Party 6, Independents and Others 32.
Ironically an FG/FF combination would have 79 TDs straight off – or precisely half the number of TDs in the ‘reformed’ Dáil. Not difficult to envisage them being able to find a fair few Ind/Others who would work with them. Though an SF/FF/Other government would be quite feasible on those figures. So, perhaps what faces us is genuinely a centre/left or centre/right option. Not very centre/left, but most definitely centre/right. Not difficult to see what is most likely.
But here’s Stephen Collin’s take:
… The increase in support for Sinn Féin, which puts the party at level pegging with Fine Gael, is the most striking feature of the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll.
While the finding is undoubtedly good news for the party some caveats are required before extrapolating from the poll result to the next general election.
And he continues – perhaps attempting to calm the horses:
… The last Irish Times poll in May had Sinn Féin on 20 per cent of the vote, yet in the local elections a few days later it won 15 per cent. By contrast Fine Gael at 24 per cent and Fianna Fáil at 25 per cent won exactly the same share of the vote in the election as they got in the poll.
Something similar happened in the presidential election of 2011 when the party got 13.5 per cent of the vote having polled 18 per cent during the campaign.
Those of us watching the process of SF’s remarkable, albeit not entirely inexorable rise over the past decade and more might throw in a counter-caveat, as it were. He’s right, at the locals SF did indeed gain 15%, which was lower than the polling projections. However, let’s also note that at the European Elections held on precisely the same day as the locals that party gained – yes, that’s right, 19.5% – an increase of 8.3% on their previous number and just 3% or so short of FG on 22.3%.
Intriguingly Harry McGee also reiterates the comparison with the local elections.
… That is good news for the party. However, there is always a significant gap between its opinion poll performances and its actual vote. For example, in the May local elections, the last opinion poll put support for Sinn Féin at 20 per cent, where the actual out-turn was just over 15 per cent (which was still a substantial gain for the party).
An explanation for the discrepancy between local and European votes? Well it’s not difficult to see that in a local election SF might potentially suffer, particularly in Dublin, from challenges to its left.
Do I think SF will get 20% at the next election? I’d tend to caution. But it’s surprising not to get a little bit deeper of an analysis of this poll and its ramifications, is it not?
And what are those ramifications? Three parties now contesting much the same ground in terms of their share of the vote, that being FG/FF and SF. One considerably smaller party. And one large bloc of non-party and small party support. That Ind/Others remains remarkably cohesive, doesn’t it? It will be quite something if upwards of 25 Ind/Other TDs are returned to a smaller Dáil.
Left Archive: Leaflet “Make the Banks Accountable”, The Workers’ Party, c. 1991/2 October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive, The Workers' Party.2 comments
Many thanks to the person who donated this to the Archive.
PDF available here: WP MAKE THE BANKS
An eve of byelection national opinion poll? Sure is. October 9, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.14 comments
Curious timing, some might think. Not that it will sway matters one way or another.
A bit breathless the headlines and the text:
Sinn Féin is neck-and-neck with Fine Gael in popular support for the first time.
And one would have to be just a little bit sceptical of the following:
The poll also shows that Labour has benefited from a modest bounce since the summer Cabinet reshuffle with new Tánaiste Joan Burton now the most popular party leader.
Well, yes, or no, depending on whether one takes seriously movements within the margin of error.
But long story short:
compared with the last Irish Times poll in May was: Fine Gael, 24 per cent (no change); Labour, 9 per cent (up two points); Fianna Fáil, 20 per cent (down five points); Sinn Féin, 24 per cent (up four points); and Independents/ Others, 23 per cent (down one point).
So, given an MOE of ‘plus or minus 2.8 per cent’, the only genuinely interesting shifts are those in relation to SF and FF. Good morning for the former, bad for the latter. And still the Ind/Others remain strongly in contention.
Still odd timing though.