By Michael Gallagher The expectation was that the same-sex marriage referendum would deliver a comfortable Yes and the vote on reducing the minimum age for the president an equally decisive No, and that’s just how it worked out. The latter achieved the distinction of delivering the lowest Yes vote (only 27 per cent) of any…
In the light of the marriage equality and presidential age referendums last week – both the product of recommendations of the Constitutional Convention, a review of the current state of play of government responses to the Convention’s recommendations is timely. The attached table gives the current situation as of today: ICC recommendations as of May 2015
There are many people and organisations to credit for the outcome of the marriage referendum, not least the incredible campaign mounted by the Yes side, as described by Noel Whelan in today’s Irish Times. A question to ask is whether this referendum would ever have happened but for the huge endorsement this issue received from…
Originally posted on John Parkinson:
It’s a glorious morning for democrats and equal rights campaigners everywhere: the Irish have voted nearly 2 to 1 to allow equal marriage rights regardless of sex. However, this is a big day for deliberative democrats too, because in all the coverage about the referendum, what keeps getting forgotten is…
Four polls were published on the marriage equality referendum last weekend. These showed large differences in the expected yes-vote, ranging from 53% to 69%. Given that these polls were taken in roughly the same period, what do such large differences tell us about popular support for the proposal? How big is the decline for a…
Political Studies Association of Ireland Annual Conference 2015 Gresham Metropole Hotel Cork, 16 – 18 October 2015 The annual conference of the PSAI will take place in Cork over the weekend 16 – 18 October 2015. Paper proposals are invited from all areas of the discipline. A detailed list of themes is included below and…
On Friday the Irish will vote on two issues. Both are being sold as reforms, one a social reform, the other a political reform. Both can be said to have come from the the ‘People’ via the Constitutional Convention. If polls are even broadly accurate one will pass comfortably, the other will be easily defeated.…
There are now so many red lines laid down during the UK general election that forming a coalition is going to resemble a scene from Mission Impossible. SNP won’t support the Tories, UKIP won’t support Labour, Sinn Féin won’t support (or oppose) anyone,… Most of this is just electioneering. Even the one party that’s keeping…
Irish Politics Forum 