The long-anticipated referendum on repealing the 8th amendment, known by proponents and opponents alike at the time of its initial adoption as the ‘pro-life amendment’, has delivered a result widely and understandably described as ‘seismic’, ‘historic’ and ‘momentous’. In a high turnout (64%, second among standalone referendums only to the 1972 vote on EC entry…
If you felt that media coverage of the recent US Presidential Election appeared to lack focus on policy issues, you may well be correct.
Today I had to give the first lecture of my ‘elections and voting’ course since Donald Trump’s shock victory. To be honest, I’m glad it wasn’t yesterday. I found myself genuinely upset by the result, to the point where any sort of objective analysis was probably impossible. Anyway, I had a good night’s sleep and spent the…
In the first Irish Polling Indicator for the 32nd Dáil, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are leading the polls with estimates around 26% each. The Irish Polling Indicator pools all Irish opinion polls to arrive at an overall estimate of where the parties stand. Fine Gael support has not changed since the February elections. The…
By Michael Gallagher In 2011, all the economic indicators had plummeted since the previous election in 2007, and it was no surprise that the government parties lost support heavily: their vote share declined by 29.7 percentage points and their seat total fell by 66 in a 166-member parliament. In 2016, by contrast, all the economic…
Opposition parties rarely win elections, governments lose them. Yesterday’s RedC poll for the Irish Sun seems to shows Fine Gael on its way to losing one. It is trending downward during the campaign. By now we were supposed to see voters considering government formation and moving back to the government. According to one Fine Gael…
By Michael Gallagher Election campaigns feature extensive, some would say excessive, discussion of the horse-race aspects: in short, how many seats will the parties win? Until the votes are cast and counted, all we have to go on are the findings from opinion polls, and the challenge is to make accurate seat predictions from these.…
Two new polls were hailed as good news for Fianna Fáil this weekend. A Red C poll put the party up 2 points to 19 per cent, while B&A put the party up 1 point to 20 per cent. In fact, neither change is statistically significant on its own – with the December poll of…
Fine Gael has strengthened its position in the polls over the last few months. At 29% it polls about 3% higher than in July of this year. Independents and small parties went down, however, from 27% to 22% over the same period of time. These are the most important findings from the new Irish Polling…
The first quarter of 2015 has seen a moderate bounce in the polls for the government coalition parties. Fine Gael was at a 22% low in December, now finds itself at 25%. Labour rose from 6% to 8% in the same time. This pattern emerges from the Irish Polling Indicator, which combines all national election…
