As noted here a couple of weeks ago, it’s debateable whether Ireland complies with the requirement in EU law that MEPs are to be elected using a system of proportional representation (PR), be that a list system or PR-STV. At present 25 countries use some kind of list system, while Ireland and Malta employ PR-STV.…
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 Michael Gallagher In essence there are two ways of trying to convert opinion poll findings regarding voting intentions into seat totals for the political parties. One, employed in the earlier post by Adrian Kavanagh (5 Feb, two posts below this one), is to assume uniform swing across the country; apply this to the party…
By Michael Gallagher With the election now just a few months away, possibly even closer, we should have a clear idea of how the parties will line up in the 31st Dáil. Nonetheless, there is evidently still a good deal of fluidity in voting intentions. Fianna Fáil support is rather like the banks’ liabilities: every…
Irish Politics Forum 