Why Vote Pds Sinn.F and Green...?

JacquesPompidou

I wonder why Fina Gael have lost out and Why people have voted Green Party, Pds, Sinn Fein, Independants, and Socialist?

Green?
I think Irish people are happy with the state of the economy but not with the life style. The Greens wanted to improve life in Dublin . The party wnats to improve health rent controls, waste collections ....

Sinn Fein
They were involved in the "peace process" for the last 10 yrs, and people may have been happy with the progress in the North. Also they seem to be connected with the grass roots of politics, in Louth they helped demonstrations for people to prevent the closure of a hospital. Of Course other parties could have done this so Did they steal votes from Labour?

Pds
The Pds are there to control Fina Fail. They have a woman leader.
Mary Harney, who became the first woman to lead a political party in Irish history. The PDs have been Fianna Fáil's coalition partners on three occasions.

Independant
People like Kathy Sinnott concered with real issues and building on Education, Health got many votes. Also disgraced TDs who have left their parties under a cloud, such as Liam Lawlor, Michael Lowry and Denis Foley are in the Independent group



[blank space cleared - Victor]

deco

I think the other side of this is that FG stand for almost nothing and in the face of an almost assured FF majority people will vote for anyone else that actually stands for something.

Ahh crap....this country is going down the shíte hole

Victor

This had better be going somewhere or else it gets a lock.

sceptre

Agree with pretty much all of your post JacquesP

I'm going to ignore Fine Gael as that's in another thread.

Greens:
They do get a lot of their vote from the middle class (part of the vote FG has relied on in the cities). They're aiming at the kind of voters who will appreciate their points on quality of life. In a concentrated area like Dublin, and in areas that have many families living there that have moved there in the past twenty years, they can rely on a vote unencumbered by civil war politics.
They also have a genuinely young vote (not the upcoming 30-somethings) - the young activist type.

Sinn Fein
They've received two types of votes. Firstly the young idealist type who are impressed with their social equality platform.These people are often young and don't remember Sinn Fein as any party apart from the "party for peace."
Secondly, the inner city working class vote they've always received. The Workers Party took this vote from them throughout the eighties. Since the demise of that party, Sinn Fein have taken back a vote they've always seen as rightfully theirs. This vote is older - people in their forties and up principally.

PDs
Easy to explain their success. They pushed themselves in the past few weeks as the party to keep an eye on Fianna Fail. People who didn't expect Fine gael to form a government switched their votes to the PDs. Michael McDowell made this election for the party. Those comments on the Bertie Bowl pushed him into the limelight, his posters in the past week ensured him a seat. If Fine Gael don't do something about it, the PDs will chip away the remnants of the floating FG vote that isn't taken by the Greens. I've a suspicion that if the PDs don't actually go into government, some of their vote will vanish without trace at the next election.

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by sceptre


Sinn Fein
They've received two types of votes. Firstly the young idealist type who are impressed with their social equality platform.
Secondly, the inner city working class vote they've always received. The Workers Party took this vote from them throughout the eighties.This vote is older - people in their forties and up principally.

Hmm. Not so sure about that. Sinn Fein do well in two types of constituency: urban areas with a lot of deprivation and poverty

and areas with a tradition of shoulder the gun republicanism.

So they did well in Inner City Dublin and Tallaght where there appeal is to the former type

and they did well in the El Paso type regions around the border where the latter sentiment runs strong.

The only place that looks anomalous is North Kerry where Ferris won, but those backward types are still fighting the Civil War. Even in the 1980s, McEllistrim's father (the Fianna Failer who took Spring's seat) was allegedly canvassing on the slogan 'Remember Ballyseedy' (a particularly nasty Free State atrocity of the 1920s). And there hasn't been enough immigration into the area to help bitter folk memories to dissipate. In the neigbouring constituency of Kerry South one of the local TDs tried to make a political issue out of the fact that some immigrant kids had nicked some sweeties from his son's shop.

Elsewhere in the country, Sinn Fein didn't come within an ass's roar of getting a seat. And they do very badly wrt transfers from all but the most radical and marginalised candidates. In sharp contrast to the Greens.