Adrian Kavanagh, 15th October 2010 When electoral boundaries were being redrawn for City abd County Council electoral areas in 2008, the terms of reference set for the two electoral area committees were changed so that, apart from exceptional cases, the minimum number of seats per electoral area would now be four, and not three as…
By Matthew Wall I’ve been doing some research work with my colleague Maria Laura Sudulich on political gambling markets in the UK and Ireland. We’ve been looking recently at whether they can be used to produce more reliable seat forecasts for UK general elections than vote intention polls (thus far, we’ve found that polls produced…
Posted by David Farrell Organised by St Patrick’s Cathedral, there will be a symposium on the economics contribution of Jonathan Swift on October 16th: more details here. The Annual Service in commemoration of Swift is on Sunday 17th October at 15.15, at which Dr. Don Thornhill (Chairman of the Competitiveness Council etc) will give an…
The Annual Political Studies Association of Ireland [PSAI] conference will be held this weekend in DIT. Details of programme below and further information here. Of particular note is the roundtable on political reform on Friday: Chair: Professor David Farrell, UCD Speakers: Joan Burton TD, Finance Spokesperson, Labour Party; Dan O’Brien, Economics Editor, Irish Times; Eddie…
Leo Varadkar’s audit of his time Would a different electoral system change anything or would the expectations by the electorate stay the same? Meetings (22%) Correspondence (16%) Media (10%) Paperwork (10%) Dail Chamber and Committee (8%) Travelling (7%) Conferences (7%) Events (7.5%) Phone Calls (5.5%) Canvass (3%) Office (2.5%) Miscellaneous (2%) Clinics and Funerals (0…
1.8 million Australian voters used the ‘early voting’ facility provided by the Australian electoral commission in the three weeks before today’s election to cast their votes, a record number. The Australians also have facilities for voting if a citizen happens to be outside of the electoral district in which they are registered on the day of the election.…
Sarah Carey’s article in today’s Irish Times is the latest contribution in the debate on whether we should consider adopting party-level gender quotas for the nomination of candidates. This article appears to me to be a particularly striking example of the combative rhetorical strategies that both sides of the debate have employed. Several opinion pieces on this topic have followed the…
Claire McGing and Adrian Kavanagh (August 5, 2010) A report on trends as to female candidate selection levels for the upcoming 2014 Local Elections can be viewed here. In light of ongoing discussion in relation to number of female TDs, this piece – a section from an article we wrote on last year’s local elections…
Following the publication of the Committee on the Constitution’s report on Ireland’s legislative electoral system, there has been relatively little debate about the merits of its proposal to establish a Citizens’ Assembly (CA). Would establishing a CA be the first step in a process of public engagement and radical institutional reform, or would it simply be…
Adrian Kavanagh (18 July 2010) Recent polls from RedC and Irish Times/Isbos-MRBI have focused significant attention on the Labour Party and point to significant gains being made by that party, as tantamount to a “Gilmore Gale”. But the extent to which these significant shifts in support levels towards the party can be translated into seat gains…
Irish Politics Forum 