Dublin Bay South By-Election

Marcusm

athlone573 wrote: »

Tis a bit of an echo chamber in here with the Bacik fans. The ones who think she's a bit uppity and just as much an embodiment of middle class privilege as the FG lad are staying out of it.

Uppity? Really.

hotmail.com

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Who's finding it hard to see the difference between the one who was threatened with jail for providing abortion information at age 17 and was at the forefront of the abortion rights debate for 30 years and the one who worked for Creighton at Renua?

The vote isn't about their history on abortion rights.

Yurt2

iffandonlyif wrote: »

You people simply cannot be for real.

Not really. I know people have done the barrister road the hard way. Not from prominent political or legal families in Dublin without one tenth of the opportunities that Geoghegan would have had at is fingertips via the social capital of his parents (not to mention his wider family).

Let's all pretend that his life path is a result of his shining brilliance and intelligence and nothing to do his family's station.

Annasopra

hotmail.com wrote: »

The vote isn't about their history on abortion rights.

No but that is one example of their difference and shows your claim up as nonsense.

Yurt2

I see John Bruton came out to bat for James Geoghegan in the Irish Times letters pages. John bristles at the fact that Una Mullaly brought up he interned in the EU embassy in Washington while Bruton was Ambassador and said he was a great little operator altogether. If someone in James' family/circle didn't pick up the phone or write an email to John to get James his sweetheart internship while he was in college I'll eat a boiled shoe.

This is the point. This is how privilege replicates itself. Never mind there are thousands of competent bright Irish students that would thrive should they get an opportunity like that via a competitive process. And that many wouldn't have the means to support themselves without patronage or wealthy parents. While James the scion of a legal and political dynasty gets shuffled in there no bother to make his CV look tip-top.

Fine Gael just don't get it.

markodaly

Yurt! wrote: »

I see John Bruton came out to bat for James Geoghegan in the Irish Times letters pages. John bristles at the fact that Una Mullaly brought up he interned in the EU embassy in Washington while Bruton was Ambassador and said he was a great little operator altogether. If someone in James' family/circle didn't pick up the phone or write an email to John to get James his sweetheart internship while he was in college I'll eat a boiled shoe.

This is the point. This is how privilege replicates itself. Never mind there are thousands of competent bright Irish students that would thrive should they get an opportunity like that via a competitive process. And that many wouldn't have the means to support themselves without patronage or wealthy parents. While James the scion of a legal and political dynasty gets shuffled in there no bother to make his CV look tip-top.

Fine Gael just don't get it.

So your entire rant about him is made up on an assumption?

Sam Russell

Well, it is all over now - Ivana Bacik won.

PommieBast

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117611186#Comment_117611186

A much-needed victory for Labour. Interesting the FG vote held up while FF & Green tanked.

Sam Russell

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117616176#Comment_117616176

That may be the FF Green voters voted for IB. The vote was very low, so enthusiasm helped. I had a posse of FG outriders looking to shoo us to the polls, but we had already been. FG and SF got their vote out.

expectationlost

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117606216#Comment_117606216

he is councillor in the area, that was his profile. I don't think you can be parachuted in over somebody who didn't put themselves forward.

L1011

Well, I was wrong saying she wasn't the right candidate for Labour. Think that was before O'Connell was definitely out but it might not have been!

Blut2

I have to hold my hands up and say I was also completely wrong with my initial doubts about Bacik's electability. She did very well to be fair to her.

FG's vote held up reasonably well so they can probably just blame the result on Geoghegan being a pretty bad candidate. O'Connell probably would have taken the seat for them.

FF on the other hand...their worst election result in their history I believe. It should really serve as a huge warning sign to them that they face electoral obliteration in the next election unless they manage to achieve some very substantial things on housing and health.

awec

SF must be disappointed as well, I think their vote share went down and they are the main opposition party?

Sam Russell

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117619830#Comment_117619830

Particularly since they made a huge effort to get their vote out, as did FG. The FG vote help up, but not so much for the SF vote.

I saw no SF or FF presence in my area, but plenty of FG, Green and Labour.

Blut2

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117623343#Comment_117623343

The SF vote actually held up better than the FG vote, according to the figures. Vote difference between the 2020 General election and the DBS by-election result:

LAB +22.4%

SF -0.3%

SD -1.4%

FG -1.5%

FF -9%

Grn -14.5%

We'd need more granular statistics to know the breakdown details for certain, but I'd imagine the historically very low working class by-election turnout, and Boylan's lack of local constituency connections/work, was cancelled out by an increased anti-government vote - which combined left them pretty much at a standstill.

PommieBast

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117624191#Comment_117624191

I've no doubt that the FG and SF vote both involved a significant amount of churn, but given the difficulty in knowing for sure I tend to reach for Occam's Razor.

jm08

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117619830#Comment_117619830

I'm surprised that SF did as well as they did. Last Gen. Election it was the first time for SF to win a seat in this constituency and a lot of that has to do that Chris Andrews is of the political Andrews family dynasty of Fianna Fail and would have a fairly high and well respected profile in the Constituency.

zimmermania

BY-ELECTIONS can be difficult to predict,occasionally if one candidate appears to be head and shoulders above all others he/she gets a vote in multiples of what their party is getting in the polls.

Labour could not have expected to head the poll in any circumstances,but because Bacik was identified as far and away the best candidate she headed the poll.

Michael D did the same or the same reasons and Jan O'Sullivan also did the same in 1998 for Labour in a by-election in Limerick when against all odds she headed the poll and won the seat.

L1011

The thing is that having a locally good candidate is the only way a party on say under 10% nationally can ever expect to get a seat at all. That got Labour 20 seats off 10.1% in 2007 - few if any of them could be seen as having been lifted in to place by a party had been on a fairly static vote share for a decade.

Whereas once a party is getting towards a polling figure that would be a five seat quota (16-17%) and beyond its much more likely that a candidate can just get lucky.

zimmermania

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117639016#Comment_117639016

There is a bit more to her election than that,you felt she was the wrong candidate in the first place and now you attribute her success to luck!

It is obvious she was perceived as the best candidate by so many

voters despite the Labour party's poor position in the polls.

L1011

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645413#Comment_117645413

You didn't understand my post if you think I said she got lucky.

zimmermania

Maybe you could explain what you your post meant.