Red C Poll

Ren2k7

alaimacerc wrote: »

No, I think hence why there's an independent "bubble" in the opinion polls at present. While Ross and Creighton continue to tout for business, conservative voters have not yet exhausted every possible avenue of voting for the same thing, and expecting a different result!

There's an element of FF support that has bled off to SF, but it's hardly the same people that have been "floating" between FF and FG. Or if it is, their political beliefs are so "fluid" as to challenge characterisation of them as "beliefs" in any meaningful sense at all. Plus lots of ex-Lab support, obviously.

You forget this is Ireland where former FG voters can quite easily hop over to SF it they feel the Shinners can better represent them. Much of the electorate are "floating voters", so don't be surprised when RedC claims SF are attracting a lot of FG voters.

alaimacerc

Ren2k7 wrote: »

You forget this is Ireland where former FG voters can quite easily hop over to SF it they feel the Shinners can better represent them. Much of the electorate are "floating voters", so don't be surprised when RedC claims SF are attracting a lot of FG voters.

I'm not saying it never has, never is, or never will happen! Just that I'm skeptical that direct switching between the two is by any means the predominant effect, as opposed to the others I mentioned. But time will tell, especially as we see how the vote for the indies holds up (or does not).

Zubeneschamali

alaimacerc wrote: »

I'm not saying it never has, never is, or never will happen! Just that I'm skeptical that direct switching between the two is by any means the predominant effect

Lots of the people who voted FG in 2011 were not FG supporters, they were just disgusted with FF. Many of them seem very disappointed that FG is also a political party full of politicians, but they are now sure that SF is an organization of saints and scholars.

Quin_Dub

The big issue is the 30% undecided , along with a large chunk of the "independent" vote..

40%+ of voters haven't decided yet.. An Improving economy and a reduction in the number of Governmental clangers over the next 6-9 months should see them move more towards FG/Lab.

Also , the fall-out from Greece (Syriza's total capitulation) should give FG/Lab more ammunition to pick holes in SF et al's Economic policies...

It will be interesting to see if there's any shift in the SF strategy around the EU and Economy now that Syriza have shown that going at the EU/ECB etc. head on does not work...

Flex

Godge wrote: »

There are two Castleknock seats in Dublin West and two Mulhuddart seats.

Varadkar is a cert for one of the Castleknock seats and Coppinger is a cert for one of the Mulhuddart seats.

After that, it is way too early to guess, but Donnelly must be in with a strong chance for the second Mulhuddart seat.

Im in Dublin West, my prediction would be similar. I expect Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and Socialist Party will each take a seat. Just cant see Labour getting enough to win one.

Godge

Flex wrote: »

Im in Dublin West, my prediction would be similar. I expect Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and Socialist Party will each take a seat. Just cant see Labour getting enough to win one.

Yes but Joan Burton will pick up transfers in a way that Donnelly won't. For example if O'Gorman polls 8-9% of the vote and his second preferences are up for grabs with Donnelly and Burton left in the race they could go 2:1 to Burton.

FG votes, either Varadkar surplus or eliminated second candidate could go 10:1 to Burton over Donnelly.

Burton will be behind on first count, but she may be able to overhaul Donnelly by the end.

hatrickpatrick

Those of us who support an independent dominated Dail are going to have to find some way of campaigning which insures that transfers go to other independents. Will be interesting to see how that can be organised.

Godge

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Those of us who support an independent dominated Dail are going to have to find some way of campaigning which insures that transfers go to other independents. Will be interesting to see how that can be organised.

So that somebody voting number 1 for Michael Healy-Rae can give their number 2 to Clare Daly and their number 3 to Michael Lowry and their number 4 to Thomas Pringle and their number 5 to Lucinda Creighton meaning they can vote for and against cronyism, for and against abortion, for and against anything you choose?

hatrickpatrick

Godge wrote: »

So that somebody voting number 1 for Michael Healy-Rae can give their number 2 to Clare Daly and their number 3 to Michael Lowry and their number 4 to Thomas Pringle and their number 5 to Lucinda Creighton meaning they can vote for and against cronyism, for and against abortion, for and against anything you choose?

Well personally my own priority would be to ensure that as many independents as possible get elected without voting for those whose behavior has been unethical in the past.

You already know my views on this, I won't get into yet another debate about it here. Point is, anyone who wants the next Dail to contain as many independents as possible will need to formulate some kind of strategy to prevent the transfers going all over the place and establishment parties being able to capitalise on that.

alaimacerc

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Point is, anyone who wants the next Dail to contain as many independents as possible

Point is, anyone whose primary criterion for voting is that, has entirely missed the point. Of this whole "politics" lark in general. Might as well just vote for the DDI crowd...

hatrickpatrick

alaimacerc wrote: »

Point is, anyone whose primary criterion for voting is that, has entirely missed the point. Of this whole "politics" lark in general. Might as well just vote for the DDI crowd...

Not at all, if one's ultimate goal is to change how politics works in this country.
A Dail which is more frightened of the public than of the cabinet is a damn good start.

alaimacerc

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Not at all, if one's ultimate goal is to change how politics works in this country.

Only if one both on the one hand, wants to "change how politics works", and on the other, has a very odd set of ideas about how one does that. Do you feel that this is in any way reflective of the views of any significant number of people who'll vote independent at the next election? (Much less of, the people currently saying they will, who actually won't.) Because that seems a fairly far-fetched interpretation to put on such votes to me.

A Dail which is more frightened of the public than of the cabinet is a damn good start.

DDI going on Grover Norquist, perhaps...

hatrickpatrick

alaimacerc wrote: »

Only if one both on the one hand, wants to "change how politics works", and on the other, has a very odd set of ideas about how one does that. Do you feel that this is in any way reflective of the views of any significant number of people who'll vote independent at the next election? (Much less of, the people currently saying they will, who actually won't.) Because that seems a fairly far-fetched interpretation to put on such votes to me.

Well given how even FG is now publicly musing about relaxing the whip to some extent, I would reckon the answer to that is an obvious yes. But I'm not hijacking yet another thread with this debate which the two of us have done to death - we're never going to agree on the subject and that's that

DDI going on Grover Norquist, perhaps...

I support direct democracy but not DDI, because what DDI are calling for is not direct democracy. Don't know much about Norquist but isn't his main policy drive simply about reducing government expenditure rather than actually reforming how the government operates?

oscarBravo

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

A Dail which is more frightened of the public than of the cabinet is a damn good start.

A government that's terrified to do anything that might be unpopular - what could possibly go wrong?

hatrickpatrick

oscarBravo wrote: »

A government that's terrified to do anything that might be unpopular - what could possibly go wrong?

It's the lesser of two evils if the only alternative is a government which never feels it has to do anything the people are happy with.

Zubeneschamali

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's the lesser of two evils

We've never had a government of independents, so you cannot know that.

hatrickpatrick

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

We've never had a government of independents, so you cannot know that.

I know what we have now. There's almost no chance a government of independents could be less democratic or less representative of the public will. If they were even 0.1% more representative, that would be a major improvement.

CramCycle

It would be interesting to have an election every few months, once a year at best.

hatrickpatrick

CramCycle wrote: »

It would be interesting to have an election every few months, once a year at best.

Or a system of recall in which a majority of citizens in a given constituency could call for a bye-election at any time during a Dail term. Anything which would prevent TDs from taking decisions without taking into account how the people who elected them as a representative would like to be represented.

Let's not get into this here though. Latest poll suggests that the doomsday scenario for independents put out in the last SBP poll was a false dip. Will have to wait for their next poll to see if it corroborates.

Godge

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Or a system of recall in which a majority of citizens in a given constituency could call for a bye-election at any time during a Dail term. .

Does the Dail sit during a bye-election campaign?

Could we end up with the dail never meeting if we organised recalls by rota?

hatrickpatrick

Godge wrote: »

Does the Dail sit during a bye-election campaign?

Why shouldn't it…?

Could we end up with the dail never meeting if we organised recalls by rota?

Under the current system, the Dail could never meet and most major legislation would emerge to the statute books entirely as it has with the Dail in session. The guillotine has been the overriding theme of this government, something which would be impossible in a Dail full of independents.

oscarBravo

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's the lesser of two evils if the only alternative is a government which never feels it has to do anything the people are happy with.

Happily, that's not only not the only alternative, but it's not even the case at the moment.

It's notable that you describe it as the lesser of two evils - at least it suggests that you understand that it's a bad thing. The problem seems to be that you don't understand just what a terrible thing it is: you are demanding that the country be run by people whose only notable character attribute is a total lack of personal conviction, other than a deeply-seated desire to be re-elected.

If your ideal politician is one who doesn't need to think about issues, but only needs to vote in whatever way he believes is going win him popularity contests, then I hope for the sake of the country that you're bitterly disappointed after the next election.

hatrickpatrick

oscarBravo wrote: »

Happily, that's not only not the only alternative, but it's not even the case at the moment.

It's notable that you describe it as the lesser of two evils - at least it suggests that you understand that it's a bad thing.

I support Swiss style direct democracy, so any system in which the majority of decisions are taken on our behalf rather than by us directly is a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.

The problem seems to be that you don't understand just what a terrible thing it is: you are demanding that the country be run by people whose only notable character attribute is a total lack of personal conviction, other than a deeply-seated desire to be re-elected.

If your ideal politician is one who doesn't need to think about issues, but only needs to vote in whatever way he believes is going win him popularity contests, then I hope for the sake of the country that you're bitterly disappointed after the next election.

Are you happy with the guillotine system we currently live under, in which the people you elect to represent you in our parliament vote in the cabinet at the start of the term and then do absolutely nothing except rubber stamp every single bit of legislation which comes their way for the rest of the term? Do you accept that the present system is bad, just as I have accepted that my alternative is also bad? We are of course discussing the lesser of two evils here.

But broadly yes, I have no shame in proclaiming that my ideal government is one which runs the country in the way that the people want it to be run, implementing the policies the people overwhelmingly support and not implementing those which are overwhelmingly opposed. Anything less as far as I'm concerned cannot be labelled democratic at all.

conorh91

CramCycle wrote: »

It would be interesting to have an election every few months, once a year at best.

It's difficult enough for governments to think about 5-year and 10-year strategies or longer. Imagine if they only took office for six months at a time. What would be the incentive for long-term projects? Governance would be taken up by short-term goodies like tax cuts or giveaway budgets.

Governments think in single electoral cycles. In my view, that's why the Oireachtas should extend the general electoral cycle to seven years, as provided for in the Constitution.

hatrickpatrick

conorh91 wrote: »

It's difficult enough for governments to think about 5-year and 10-year strategies or longer. Imagine if they only took office for six months at a time. What would be the incentive for long-term projects? Governance would be taken up by short-term goodies like tax cuts or giveaway budgets.

Governments think in single electoral cycles. In my view, that's why the Oireachtas should extend the general electoral cycle to seven years, as provided for in the Constitution.

What incentive do they have now? At least in a short-term system, they'd have to keep validating that the electorate was actually pleased with how they were being represented.

This is drifting off topic however. The point I was making is that under our PR system, even if independents get the highest share of the vote percentage, we can't guarantee that this will translate to seats unless we come up with some way of disciplining transfers from one to another while still ensuring they all get votes.

It'll require a vote management strategy by those who support independents. Unfortunately it would probably also require some to ask people to vote for a potential colleague #1 and themselves #2 and so on - something I can't see happening. The only party I know of who employ such a strategy, to their credit, is FG.

I'll have to look into some stats on vote transfers tomorrow, but I fear that the independent vote could get massively diluted on election day by bad transfers even if they do get an initial majority of first preferences.

Any pro-indy folk have suggestions as to how this could be countered?

conorh91

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

What incentive do they have now? At least in a short-term system, they'd have to keep validating that the electorate was actually pleased with how they were being represented.

Media opinion polls and internal opinion polls do exactly that. Anyway I understand this is a side-issue so I'm not going to labour the point.

I fear that the independent vote could get massively diluted on election day by bad transfers even if they do get an initial majority of first preferences.

Any pro-indy folk have suggestions as to how this could be countered?

By identifying common political positions and shared objectives, and garnering alliances for vote-sharing? We could call it "a political party".

Sorry if that sounds more snide than intended. But in my view, either you are independent or your are allied with like-minded individuals. Distinguishing the latter from a political party is pointless semantics.

hatrickpatrick

conorh91 wrote: »

Media opinion polls and internal opinion polls do exactly that. Anyway I understand this is a side-issue so I'm not going to labour the point.

You talk as if governments actually pay attention to the aforementioned. :rolleyes:

They certainly would if their seats were constantly under threat.

By identifying common political positions and shared objectives, and garnering alliances for vote-sharing? We could call it "a political party".

Sorry if that sounds more snide than intended. But in my view, either you are independent or your are allied with like-minded individuals. Distinguishing the latter from a political party is pointless semantics.

Not at all. All establishment parties in Ireland are subject to a three line whip. Independents are not. Big difference.

The minute any independent candidates decide to band together under any kind of arrangement which would constrain how freely they could vote on legislation given to them by the cabinet during the next government, I for one will cease all support for those candidates. We're looking for a Dail which is completely independent in its decision making, rather than beholden to the cabinet.

Labarbapostiza

Rightwing wrote: »

Looking at this graph, FG looks to be in the most volatile position. They need the voter to feel the effects of the recovery, that's too late for Labour..

Traditional FG voters have felt the "recovery"; increase in rental income, and zero austerity for the ranchers. Family owned civil engineering firms are also feeling a strong pick up in business. It's been milky bars all round for Fine Gael supporters. And why not aren't they the owners of the country and deserve every penny.

Meanwhile for Labour supporters, rising rents, stagnant wages, confusion. a feeling of being sold out.


I'll be supporting Sinn Fein in the next election.

You'll see my electioneering graffiti up soon enough "come home to a real home fire.......vote Fine Gael."

alaimacerc

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Well given how even FG is now publicly musing about relaxing the whip to some extent, I would reckon the answer to that is an obvious yes. But I'm not hijacking yet another thread with this debate which the two of us have done to death - we're never going to agree on the subject and that's that

But this is a question of fact, not a question of opinion. Either this is the reason people (are saying they might) vote independent, or it isn't. Transfer patterns will determine this pretty conclusively.

Don't know much about Norquist but isn't his main policy drive simply about reducing government expenditure rather than actually reforming how the government operates?

I was thinking in particular of his "reduce government to the size where you could drown it in the bathtub" motto. Your thinking seems to be heading in a very similar direction.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Not at all. All establishment parties in Ireland are subject to a three line whip. Independents are not. Big difference.

That's entirely a matter of party policy. Gruppetto Lucinda is promising "whip a la carte". A "true DD party" could give similar undertakings on a broader basis.

Mind you, your dire vista of the whip is somewhat belied by the fact that it's ultimate sanction... is to turn someone into an independent, which is exactly what you want.

We're looking for a Dail which is completely independent in its decision making, rather than beholden to the cabinet.

Who's this "we", kemo sabe? I'm counting you, thus far.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This is drifting off topic however. The point I was making is that under our PR system, even if independents get the highest share of the vote percentage, we can't guarantee that this will translate to seats unless we come up with some way of disciplining transfers from one to another while still ensuring they all get votes.

We can pretty much guarantee this won't happen, for the very reason that this isn't remotely what people actually want.

It'll require a vote management strategy by those who support independents. Unfortunately it would probably also require some to ask people to vote for a potential colleague #1 and themselves #2 and so on - something I can't see happening.

No, this type of arrangement is only needed where someone might pass the quota in a "wasteful" way, and their running mate loses out due to "transfer inefficiency". i.e. the people putting the more popular party candidate over didn't bother to transfer at all, or they transferred to other candidates. (Personal vote, localism, etc.) It also requires pretty close estimates of how many "available" votes there are to manage. None of that really applies in any seat or for any permutation I'm aware of.

I'll have to look into some stats on vote transfers tomorrow, but I fear that the independent vote could get massively diluted on election day by bad transfers even if they do get an initial majority of first preferences.

Any pro-indy folk have suggestions as to how this could be countered?

I assume you mean an initial plurality. i.e. "topping the poll". Or the leading "party"... which is of course meaningless, for all the reasons we keep pointing out, as they're not.

If everyone voting independent -- or even a significant chunk of them -- were doing so for your reasons, it would be simplicity itself. Just rank all the independents ahead of all the party candidates. Job done. (For extra credit rank them in some actual order of preference on policy grounds, but that's entirely besides the point for present discussion.) The wedge of "omni-indie" support will end up with whoever might possibly be electable, on the basis of any other support.

CramCycle

conorh91 wrote: »

It's difficult enough for governments to think about 5-year and 10-year strategies or longer. Imagine if they only took office for six months at a time. What would be the incentive for long-term projects? Governance would be taken up by short-term goodies like tax cuts or giveaway budgets.

Governments think in single electoral cycles. In my view, that's why the Oireachtas should extend the general electoral cycle to seven years, as provided for in the Constitution.

I forgot the god damned smiley face/pac man. It would clearly be a mess, the country would be in tatters unless, somehow, the country was running perfectly when this happened with enough overage to cover the cost of elections (clearly not going to happen and if it did, not llong till it failed due to changing conditions in any direction).

It was one of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of reducing Dail seats, the main reason in fact. At the minute it is a contest of pandering to your constituents to get the best for some small area. Rather than doing whats best for the country regardless of the localised issues. A TDs priority should be the country, not their constituency. If there were reduced seats, they would have to pander on more national issues, rather than small, localised, county/town/city council issues. Councils should filter local issues that could be national issues up to TDs, maybe through a constituency council with reps from each council to flag these issues.

marienbad

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's the lesser of two evils if the only alternative is a government which never feels it has to do anything the people are happy with.

dream on .

Quin_Dub

The very nature of Independents means this could never ever happen.

In any constituency you'll have a wide array of independents

• The Former Mainstream party guy who left/got kicked out (Lowry , McGrath etc.)
• The Political Activist type (Usually VERY Hard left)
• The Local Issue guy (Re-open the Hospital/School , Fix the roads etc.)
• The Religious nutcase
• And Recently , The Anti-Something/Everything guy

Expecting voters to transfer between those groups is pure fantasy..

The rise of the "Independent" vote in the opinion polls isn't real..

It's a trendy way of saying "Don't Know , but a bit pissed off right now"

With the exception of sitting Independent TD's , no one has the first clue who or what will be on their Voting papers come Election day , so saying "I'll vote independent" at this stage is a bit silly TBH.

If you are suggesting that people vote for independents just because they are independent and not because the feel the candidate has good ideas/passion for the job etc then that's simply crazy.

conorh91

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

You talk as if governments actually pay attention to the aforementioned. :rolleyes:

The idea that political parties and the Government don't pay attention to opinion polls is extremely naive. Why else would they regularly commission their own opinion polls?

Not at all. All establishment parties in Ireland are subject to a three line whip. Independents are not. Big difference.

That's a convention, not a rule. You're really just talking about a looser political party than has heretofore been seen.

The difference between a 'platform of politicians with common objectives organized in a co-ordinated alliance' and 'a political party' is semantic and serves absolutely no function.

Idbatterim

Traditional FG voters have felt the "recovery"; increase in rental income, and zero austerity for the ranchers. Family owned civil engineering firms are also feeling a strong pick up in business. It's been milky bars all round for Fine Gael supporters. And why not aren't they the owners of the country and deserve every penny.

Meanwhile for Labour supporters, rising rents, stagnant wages, confusion. a feeling of being sold out.

LOL, good one, I voted FG, you think I dont have all of the rising costs you mention?! Labour are for the most vulnerable and the least vulnerable i.e. the PS, where does that leave the working man? The way you portray FG voters is laughable, yes, they are Denis O'Brien types, all whatever hundred of thousand voted for them last time round (081,628 first preference votes):rolleyes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_2011

They probably lost far more than a lot of the Labour voters you are on about and they have certainly contributed far more. when you live off the state, free house, medical card, bla bla bla, what do you have to lose, a few euro a week? No debts, no worries, leave it to others to worry about keeping a roof over your head and food in the fridge!

hatrickpatrick

conorh91 wrote: »

The idea that political parties and the Government don't pay attention to opinion polls is extremely naive. Why else would they regularly commission their own opinion polls?

Why was reform of IW and water charges not mooted until we had a hundred thousand people on the streets? Poll after poll had previously shown that people weren't ok with it.

That's a convention, not a rule. You're really just talking about a looser political party than has heretofore been seen.

The difference between a 'platform of politicians with common objectives organized in a co-ordinated alliance' and 'a political party' is semantic and serves absolutely no function.

Fair point. But in Ireland, "political party" has now become synonymous with "lemmings who vote as they're told or face horrible consequences". Even without this, any kind of party, when formed, is almost guaranteed to dilute the level to which TDs vote in line with how their constituents feel about legislation, no?

hatrickpatrick

Quin_Dub wrote: »

The very nature of Independents means this could never ever happen.

In any constituency you'll have a wide array of independents

• The Former Mainstream party guy who left/got kicked out (Lowry , McGrath etc.)
• The Political Activist type (Usually VERY Hard left)
• The Local Issue guy (Re-open the Hospital/School , Fix the roads etc.)
• The Religious nutcase
• And Recently , The Anti-Something/Everything guy

Expecting voters to transfer between those groups is pure fantasy..

We'll see. And I don't agree with your label of the "anti something/everything" guy but we'll argue about that in another thread. Opposing the establishment does not mean opposing everything and supporting nothing, it just means supporting nothing that is currently on the table.

The rise of the "Independent" vote in the opinion polls isn't real..

Sure, that's why independent and non-establishment parties made such widespread gains during the local and European elections :rolleyes:

It's a trendy way of saying "Don't Know , but a bit pissed off right now"

Well it isn't for me or anyone I know. So straight away your premise is flawed - there are at least some voters out there who are disillusioned with guillotine politics itself, not with the people running it.

With the exception of sitting Independent TD's , no one has the first clue who or what will be on their Voting papers come Election day , so saying "I'll vote independent" at this stage is a bit silly TBH.

I know the choice will be between whipped, useless TDs who only do what they're told by their cabinet masters, and TDs who vote using their own minds. That's enough for me.

If you are suggesting that people vote for independents just because they are independent and not because the feel the candidate has good ideas/passion for the job etc then that's simply crazy.

I agree that it's crazy, as I said above. But it's slightly less crazy than voting for people who are just conduits for cabinet policy and offer absolutely no checks or balances (which is what parliament is supposed to be for) on the cabinet. As I've said before, we're looking for the lesser of two evils here. Nothing about Irish politics can be described as "good" at the moment in my view, but some things are less bad than others.

hatrickpatrick

marienbad wrote: »

dream on .

So you're saying you feel a government which has no accountability is the lesser of two evils against a government which is permanently accountable? Or are you suggesting that we have some third option I'm unaware of?

Godge

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

What incentive do they have now? At least in a short-term system, they'd have to keep validating that the electorate was actually pleased with how they were being represented.

This is drifting off topic however. The point I was making is that under our PR system, even if independents get the highest share of the vote percentage, we can't guarantee that this will translate to seats unless we come up with some way of disciplining transfers from one to another while still ensuring they all get votes.

It'll require a vote management strategy by those who support independents. Unfortunately it would probably also require some to ask people to vote for a potential colleague #1 and themselves #2 and so on - something I can't see happening. The only party I know of who employ such a strategy, to their credit, is FG.

I'll have to look into some stats on vote transfers tomorrow, but I fear that the independent vote could get massively diluted on election day by bad transfers even if they do get an initial majority of first preferences.

Any pro-indy folk have suggestions as to how this could be countered?

The normal way is to set up a political party of people who share similar aims and policies.

hatrickpatrick

CramCycle wrote: »

I forgot the god damned smiley face/pac man. It would clearly be a mess, the country would be in tatters unless, somehow, the country was running perfectly when this happened with enough overage to cover the cost of elections (clearly not going to happen and if it did, not llong till it failed due to changing conditions in any direction).

It was one of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of reducing Dail seats, the main reason in fact. At the minute it is a contest of pandering to your constituents to get the best for some small area. Rather than doing whats best for the country regardless of the localised issues. A TDs priority should be the country, not their constituency. If there were reduced seats, they would have to pander on more national issues, rather than small, localised, county/town/city council issues. Councils should filter local issues that could be national issues up to TDs, maybe through a constituency council with reps from each council to flag these issues.

If we properly devolved Dail powers over local issues to local government, there would be no need for any of this. And I totally believe that this must go hand in hand with political reform by the way, in order to prevent parish pump situations.

hatrickpatrick

Godge wrote: »

The normal way is to set up a political party of people who share similar aims and policies.

But we're talking about people who may not share any common ground at all, so what's the point of setting up a party?

hatrickpatrick

alaimacerc wrote: »

But this is a question of fact, not a question of opinion. Either this is the reason people (are saying they might) vote independent, or it isn't. Transfer patterns will determine this pretty conclusively.

Fair point. So perhaps it's not necessary to do anything further than campaigning for independents and against established parties.

I was thinking in particular of his "reduce government to the size where you could drown it in the bathtub" motto. Your thinking seems to be heading in a very similar direction.

It depends what this phrase means - I'm pretty sure he was referring to government spending, not government power. If he was referring to the latter, then yes absolutely.

That's entirely a matter of party policy. Gruppetto Lucinda is promising "whip a la carte". A "true DD party" could give similar undertakings on a broader basis.

Fair point. I simply haven't seen any of those emerge yet, and personally I won't touch Lucinda's crowd with a barge pole for several reasons, the first being that they are former members of the current government and are likely to pursue broadly similar policies and the second being that they are including Fidelma "Fraping, where you're raped on Facebook" Healy-Eames as an apparent front line candidate. The last thing this country needs is more social conservatism, in my view.

Having said that, they're still a better choice than any of the establishment parties, no question whatsoever about that.

Mind you, your dire vista of the whip is somewhat belied by the fact that it's ultimate sanction... is to turn someone into an independent, which is exactly what you want.

In a Dail which only allows full speaking rights to groups with 7 or more members, this is effectively political castration. In a Dail where independent comprise the majority of TDs, this standing order would become completely unworkable and would be thrown out pretty quickly.

Of course, if the current government would take the initiative to scrap it themselves, I might not be so rabidly pro-independent.

Who's this "we", kemo sabe? I'm counting you, thus far.

Pay attention to programs like TWIP, Vinnie B, Prime Time etc when they're discussing the rise of independents and the effect of the guillotine on the current government. Based on audience comments, tweets, emails etc I am definitely not alone on this.

We can pretty much guarantee this won't happen, for the very reason that this isn't remotely what people actually want.

Again, all I can say is we'll see.

No, this type of arrangement is only needed where someone might pass the quota in a "wasteful" way, and their running mate loses out due to "transfer inefficiency". i.e. the people putting the more popular party candidate over didn't bother to transfer at all, or they transferred to other candidates. (Personal vote, localism, etc.) It also requires pretty close estimates of how many "available" votes there are to manage. None of that really applies in any seat or for any permutation I'm aware of.

I assume you mean an initial plurality. i.e. "topping the poll". Or the leading "party"... which is of course meaningless, for all the reasons we keep pointing out, as they're not.

If everyone voting independent -- or even a significant chunk of them -- were doing so for your reasons, it would be simplicity itself. Just rank all the independents ahead of all the party candidates. Job done. (For extra credit rank them in some actual order of preference on policy grounds, but that's entirely besides the point for present discussion.) The wedge of "omni-indie" support will end up with whoever might possibly be electable, on the basis of any other support.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this, and I have a bit of a fuzzy brain at the moment due to lack of sleep so forgive my current mathematical inadequacy but let's suppose 75% of the population in a given constituency want independent candidates and 25% want a party candidate.

There are three seats, and there are ten candidates running, 9 indies and one FG (just for a hypothetical example).

Problem here is, if each of the indies only gets 7/8% of the vote because people who want independents as a concept haven't decided collectively who to give votes to, and the other 25% all vote for the FGer, then the FGer will get elected first even though the vast majority wanted a non party candidate.

This is of course assuming that many people share my anti establishment view, which is impossible to prove or disprove at this point. But in that scenario, because of inefficient transfer strategy, The FG'er would have got elected to the first seat in the constituency and one of the indies would have been eliminated.

If, however, the 75% who want non party candidates all manage to agree to a strategy of voting for four of them, 1, 2, 3 and 4 on every ballot paper, then in my line of thinking the FGers and those indies outside that strategy would be eliminated fairly early on, and the victory of the four would be more or less guaranteed. Correct, or not? If I've misunderstood the transfer system or bungled the maths here, feel free to correct me.

alaimacerc

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Fair point. So perhaps it's not necessary to do anything further than campaigning for independents and against established parties.

If I were you, and I were trying to "get out the independent vote bloc" -- and I'm very glad I'm not! -- the key point I would stress to like-minded people is transfers. Then more transfers. Then still more transfers. There's no real "tactical voting" involved, though. Just that while one has a sincere preference (however much one of relative distaste rather than enthusiasm), one should keep transferring. Don't just vote your vote for one (or four) and then go home. If you your highest priority is voting non-party, then obviously transfer accordingly. I think that most people, though, would rather vote for a party candidate they largely agree with than an indie they're utterly opposed to the views of, even if they otherwise like the idea of "shaking them up".

The last thing this country needs is more social conservatism, in my view.

I comfort myself that it's something that's on its way down, rather than up. Just very slowly. Economic reaction and inequality I'm much less cheerful(!) about.

In a Dail which only allows full speaking rights to groups with 7 or more members, this is effectively political castration. In a Dail where independent comprise the majority of TDs, this standing order would become completely unworkable and would be thrown out pretty quickly.

I think some sort of reform to the party/technical group system is inevitable. Elected representatives should get speaking time and "ways and means" support in some reasonable implementation of proportionality. There shouldn't be artificial thresholds -- though equally, there shouldn't be perverse incentives for groups to keep "splitting" and get unduly rewarded for doing so.

Pay attention to programs like TWIP, Vinnie B, Prime Time etc when they're discussing the rise of independents and the effect of the guillotine on the current government. Based on audience comments, tweets, emails etc I am definitely not alone on this.

I think you're as near as dammit to being alone in your reason for voting independent. People are supporting an incohesive collection for indies for an incoherent set of reasons. Yes, there's unhappiness with aspects of parliamentary procedure. I'm not sure the two are even especially correlated, much less in lockstep the way you seem to think.

Problem here is, if each of the indies only gets 7/8% of the vote because people who want independents as a concept haven't decided collectively who to give votes to, and the other 25% all vote for the FGer, then the FGer will get elected first even though the vast majority wanted a non party candidate.

All depends on the transfers. To take the extreme cases: if each of the pro-indies "gives their number one" to just one of those, in roughly each proportions, and doesn't bother transferring at all, then the FGer and the top two indies get elected in that order "without meeting the quota". If on the other hand they all "vote the straight ABFG Indie ticket", and don't transfer to FG at all, then the top three Indies (after however many rounds of transfers are involved. No need for Bertie-in-Drumcondra type vote management, as no-one is exceeding the quota (at least not in any excessive way in any early round).

Obviously in practice it's somewhere in between, wherein the complexity and fuzziness kicks in...

If, however, the 75% who want non party candidates all manage to agree to a strategy of voting for four of them, 1, 2, 3 and 4 on every ballot paper, then in my line of thinking the FGers and those indies outside that strategy would be eliminated fairly early on, and the victory of the four would be more or less guaranteed. Correct, or not? If I've misunderstood the transfer system or bungled the maths here, feel free to correct me.

If you can get the 75% to agree, you're laughing all the way regardless of "strategy". The trickier bit is where you have some smaller cohort wanting "any independent whatsoever" and are trying to second-guess what other people might be doing for other reasons (like, actually preferring a particular candidate -- craziness!). Yes, there are marginal cases where you could get a candidates that's super-transfer-attractive gets eliminated early due to small numbers of high preferences. Arrow's Theorem, whachagonnado? But they're rarely worth worrying about in practice.

Actually, if there's some super-popular indie that could be put well over the quota on the first count by such antics, then it would work against the interests of the other indies. Because then your "strategic" transfers get lumped into the surplus, many of which may be transfer-ineffective, so they get proportionately diluted. Better to vote for those four in various different orders. But mainly best to vote for all nine indies, in whatever order, and tell others to do likewise, if that's genuinely what you want.

alaimacerc

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

But we're talking about people who may not share any common ground at all, so what's the point of setting up a party?

By hypothesis, they share the common ground of wanting more direct democracy (unlike those DDI splitters!), comprehensive reform to Dáil procedure, etc. Given that much of that would best be done through constitutional change, setting up a political party is hardly over-engineered.

Zubeneschamali

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

But we're talking about people who may not share any common ground at all, so what's the point of setting up a party?

Suppose that no-one from any party was elected next time, you had 100% independent TDs. Guess what would happen?

The TDs who have common goals would tend to vote together. After a while, some might make a pact, and say I'll vote for your crazy idea if you vote for mine. Then they'll need rules to make sure everyones ideas are treated equally. Then they'll need some sort of sanction for TDs who break the pact.

In short order, they'll reinvent the Parliamentary Party, whip and all.

And the ones who don't join such a group will not get any legislation passed, as the new Parties will always outvote them.

alaimacerc

CramCycle wrote: »

At the minute it is a contest of pandering to your constituents to get the best for some small area. Rather than doing whats best for the country regardless of the localised issues. A TDs priority should be the country, not their constituency. If there were reduced seats, they would have to pander on more national issues, rather than small, localised, county/town/city council issues.

I'm not convinced about that. What's the magic size of constituency that prevents rampant localism across it? Or across a half or a third over it, given the immediate instincts of the political parties to carve up a constituency to run candidates from different ends of it. I suspect you'd still get it even if we were down to Dublin, Rest of the Country 1, and Rest of the Country 2. Witness the Euros. And you have to have enough seats for cabinet government, opposition, and backbench scrutiny in committees. Go much below 100 and you start to look like an overgrown council chamber.

hatrickpatrick

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Suppose that no-one from any party was elected next time, you had 100% independent TDs. Guess what would happen?

The TDs who have common goals would tend to vote together. After a while, some might make a pact, and say I'll vote for your crazy idea if you vote for mine. Then they'll need rules to make sure everyones ideas are treated equally. Then they'll need some sort of sanction for TDs who break the pact.

In short order, they'll reinvent the Parliamentary Party, whip and all.

And the ones who don't join such a group will not get any legislation passed, as the new Parties will always outvote them.

You're assuming that the vast majority of independents have absolutely no integrity whatsoever. You could easily be right, but it's pure speculation without any evidence whatsoever.

If that does indeed happen, then subsequent political reform will have to target Dail standing orders rather than party make-up. It would still be a victory in that the entire establishment would have been gotten rid of, but it wouldn't achieve the objective of making cabinet accountable to parliament.

It's a gamble, sure. But if we re-elect establishment parties, there's no gamble - we'll be 100% definitely getting the same crappy guillotine system for another five years. I'll take my chances with anything that has even the slightest, tiniest possibility of being less autocratic.

alaimacerc

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

You're assuming that the vast majority of independents have absolutely no integrity whatsoever.

Only under your interpretation that independents are actually the anti-party party. Which seems unlikely, on what we see thus far. Including, what the independents themselves say, and people's stated reasons for voting for them.

You could easily be right, but it's pure speculation without any evidence whatsoever.

That's practically the independent motto. Vote for me, there's No Evidence Whatsoever I'm exactly like all the other politicians! (Assuming we ignore any such evidence that doesn't suit.)

Zubeneschamali

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

You're assuming that the vast majority of independents have absolutely no integrity whatsoever.

No, I am assuming that people go into politics and get elected to try and get things done.

The most effective way to get things done is to be in a party of like-minded TDs, so that is what will happen.

Field east

Rightwing wrote: »

I'm not sure I'd buy into that. The thing about independents is, they may get c 28%, but not secure all that many seats (may just miss out on many, despite getting a lot of votes).

When the monthly survey is carried out I assume that the question asked - of the 1000 rang- is :- 'who would you give your 1st preference to if a general election was held today ' . There are three issues that are never addressed in relation to the % that opt for voting independents ie:-

(1) the assumption that an independent candidate will be put forward in every electoral area - the number put forward would be very relevant
(2)the assumption that they will all be 'electoral friendly'. It is a very unproven field for independents in most constituencies- they do not have a tradition of polling well..
(3) how much of the swing towards the Ind is due to the performance of some of the independents on the floor of the Dail/on radio and TV. And if there are not similar in dependant performers/personalities available in each electoral area will the same percentage votes pertain?

In summary, maybe those who are politically more savvy might be of the opinion that the above points are irrelevant given the large % casting their first preferences for independents.

hatrickpatrick

This is what currently happens.

Cabinet: here's the legislation. You have 24 hours to read it and we'll vote on it tomorrow.
Government TDs: Well, we might need to change-
Cabinet: HMMPH!
Government TDs: Yeah but-
Cabinet: YMMPH!
Government TDs: But are you sure this is the best wa-
Cabinet: RMMMPH!!!!!

Now in a proper parliamentary democracy, the government TDs would then say "right, well if you won't give us time to look at the legislation, we'll vote against it. And we'll keep voting against it until you give us time to look at it, and consider any proposed amendments. If we're still not happy, we'll reject it outright".

Instead, what happens is "well we're not happy, but if we lose the party whip we can no longer speak in the Dail, so f*ck it this legislation isn't worth losing that right over. *begrudgingly votes for the legislation even though they know it's a bad idea*

In essence: the guillotine.

Are those who are so vehemently opposing independents seriously implying that this is how government should be run? Because I'm being totally serious when I say this is the only choice I see us being given. Vote independent, or vote for five more years of that utter sh!te.

EDIT: I've come up with a fantastic slogan for the anti-establishment movement as well: "vote independent - because whips belong in the bedroom, not in the Dail" :pac: