Posted by Matt Wall In today’s Irish Times, the editors of this site published a co-authored piece, calling on the next government to get off on the right foot in implementing their reform plans. We suggested several steps that a new government should take from the get go to demonstrate that campaign promises of political reform…
Liam Weeks* Since 2011 may be the last general election by PR-STV in Ireland (if some of the political parties get their way), it is worth looking at the value of the transferable nature of the vote. This is one particular feature that makes STV so voter-friendly and yet its value is sometimes dismissed by…
NOTES ON PROPOSALS FOR POLITICAL REFORM MADE AT SEMINAR OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENTARY (FORMER MEMBERS) SOCIETY HELD IN THE DAIL CHAMBER ON FRIDAY JANUARY 21ST 2011. Posted on behalf of Gemma Hussey by David Farrell (March 2, 2011) 1. A draft of expenditure proposals in the Budget should be published six weeks in advance with…
Eoin O’Malley (28 February, 2011) Although the election was a seismic event in the redevelopment of the Irish party system, the decisions made in the next week as to the structure of the government will have a greater long term impact. The decision Labour has to take as to whether to go into government or…
Guest post by Peter Mair (posted by David Farrell, Feb 28, 2011) This election goes down not only as the most volatile in Irish democratic history, but also as one of the most volatile elections in postwar Europe. Aggregate electoral volatility is conventionally measured with the simple Pedersen index, which adds the absolute values of…
by Kevin Cunningham Trinity College Dublin Why a new approach? STV is very exciting. With so many independent candidates, it is quite likely that transfers will have an even greater effect in this election than in previous years. Our system has so many intricacies that it is quite difficult to convert estimated vote share (from…
By Jane Suiter The campaign we have just witnessed is unusual in Irish party political terms and may be one of the first where national policy has played an important part. There is little doubt when we examine movements in opinion polls over the course of the campaign that Fine Gael ran the most effective…
Guest article by Mark Farrelly, NUI Maynooth Whilst much attention has been paid to the low numbers of female TDs in the Dáil, there has been no examination of the dearth of younger TDs. The average age of TDs has been getting progressively older since 1918. Taking a cross section of elections, held between 1918 and…
The Millward Brown Lansdowne opinion poll, published in the 23rd February edition of The Irish Independent estimates party support as follows: Fianna Fail 14%, Fine Gael 38%, Labour 20%, Green Party 1%, Sinn Fein 11%, Others 16%. Based solely on these poll figures, my uniform-swing constituency level analysis models seat estimates for the different parties/groupings as…
Guest post by Kevin Cunningham, TCD (posted by David Farrell, February 22, 2011) Background This article explains some of the problems of common polling interpretation and applies the leading solution to the general election campaign of 2011. It also offers a more accurate interpretation of trends and generates a current poll of polls as at…
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