FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3 - Threadbanned User List in OP

I put Blanch on ignore because he/she does not contribute anything other than rabid anti-SF stuff to discussions.

The RedC polls have always been more favourable to FG and to Labour. It could be due to their methodology which uses a 40K panel which RedC thinks represents the electorate. That panel has been sliced and diced so that they already know the locations and age groups of the panelists. It makes it a lot easier to provide breakdowns by location and age. A panel approach is not exactly the random sample that other pollsters use. It is also a bit of a double edge sword for the parties because it will have some of the characteristics of a tracking poll. A tracking poll surveys the same set of voters repeatedly. While RedC selects their sample for each poll randomly from the panel some of these panelists will have been surveyed previously over a year. For politicians, that kind of information is gold because it will show (slightly) how intentions are changing.

There's also a kind of status thing with RedC among the FG/Labour voters. It has been continually treated as the best of the pollsters and that might help with the reponse rate. It also has been running polls for the Sunday Business Post and that has a different readership to that of the Sindo. If RedC polls are beginning to show FG support falling then this is the ice cracking beneath FG. Combine that with FF's poor showing and SF's support and FFG is facing a Titanic problem for the next GE.

The one thing that the pollsters seem to ignore is the rate of change of the electorate. When Ireland was dominated by FF/FG and Civil War politics, the FF/FG axis used to get over 80% of the vote in GEs. That started to change as the generation that was born in the 1960s and 1970s became eligible to vote through the 1980s and 1990s. The old crooked FF/FG ways didn't appeal to many of these new voters and some may have voted Labour for a while as they thought that Labour was different.

Without the Civil War politics dominating things for these voters, a fragmentation of political support happened. But it was nothing compared to what happened with the mismanagement of the economy by FF/FG/PDs in the early 2000s. Almost a generation of voters will have grown up seeing the stress that the bursting of the property bubble and the bank bailouts put on their parents and families while the politicians, banksters and cronys who caused the problems got away with big pensions and no sanctions.

That has had a radicalising effect on voters. And for whom do the voters who have seen the effects of crooked FF/FG/PD/Labour policies on their families vote? Certainly not FF/FG/Labour. What is happening with the rise of SF and the collapse of FF/FG is a generational shift but the political journalists in the media generally have an Arts background rather than STEM background so they are intellectually incapable of properly analysing polls. Support for Labour in the younger demographics has collapsed. Support for FF is collapsing in these demographics. FG isn't doing well. In older demographics, FF and FG are beginning to cannibalise each other's vote.

As part of the 2.5 party model, FF and FG could always rely upon Labour to be the third party. The polls started to show that model breaking down by 2013 but, again, the political journalists and waffling "commentators" never even saw it coming. By 2015, it was obvious that Labour was going to be demolished in the 2016 GE but there was the usual clueless commentary about how Labour wouldn't be badly affected and some were claiming that it would return around 15 seats. Labour was reduced to 7 seats from the 37 seats it won in 2011.

This was the move to the current Big Three model where no two parties of the Big Three had enough seats to form a government. This was being predicted by the opinion polls and was glaringly obvious. Labour's problem was existential. It had shifted away from the unions and industry support base that it had for decades to becoming a (Yet Another Teacher Seeking Election) YATSE party and SF quickly moved in on its old union and Left wing support base as the upwardly mobile teacher/TD wannabes took over Labour. One of the problems with Irish politics is the massive over-representation of teacher/TDs in the Oireachtas. It was around 27% of all representative at one stage. When Labour imploded, FF/FG lost their lobby fodder party.

The current opinion polls show a new political model in development. Some of it is down to a changing electorate but it is closer to being a traditional Left/Right political axis with FF/FG/Labour being on the Right of centre and SF and some others being on the centre to Left side of the political spectrum. What is most interesting is the development of the SocDems. The support for this party, again based on the polls, is a combination of younger voters and formerly Leftist voters who would previously have voted Labour. This is why the aging has-beens in Labour want to get their claws into the SocDem votes by proposing a very Stickies-like "merger". The nightmare scenario for FF/FG and Labour in the next GE is that some SF transfers go to the SocDems rather than to FF/FG candidates and Labour candidates.

As has been seen with FF's moronic strategy of continually attacking SF, attacking SF doesn't work. Even the Sunday/Daily Blueshirt effort from the Sindo/Indo is not effective. The abject stupidity of Foley's comments at the FF Ard Fheis might have worked well with the diminishing number of FF faithful that even bothered to turn up but most people are too busy worrying about how to pay energy bills and deal with the increased cost of living. A similar effect happens when Varadkar and FG try to attack SF to deflect from FG failure.

Few things harden a voter's resolve like politicans attacking the party for which they are considering voting. Rather than winning hearts and minds of floating voters, FF/FG are doing everything they can to drive them to vote for SF. The FF/FG presstitutes in the media are preaching to a shrinking choir as bills and the Homelessness issue radicalise voters.

Many floating voters voted FF/FG out of financial self-interest. To use the quote from "Trading Places", the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people. Take away the slimey media appearances by Martin and Varadkar and that's exactly what FFG policies are doing.

Regards...jmcc

You aren jmcc can talk all you like about the polls, I don't mind.

The issue is that they give zero guidance to what will happen in the next general election. Things may change dramatically, or only a little, but they will change substantively.

Oh, I expect the local and European elections to go the way of these polls. Then when that is out of people's systems, we will see whether it is long-lasting or not.

Not until you make it so. You don't have to answer with a War and Peace contibution like earlier.

Do the guilty parties have €3 billion lying around to pay for this? Of course they don't, it is silly populism to suggest that the guilty parties fund it.

I don't have a party.

Are you accusing me of being a bot for a party? If not, apologise.

Do you consider it just that those who are innocent should have to pay?

Regards...jmcc

That horse has bolted the gov is spending 11 billion now to try and win some support back and to play some mind games with the Shinners its just not enough. The tax payer looking at this sees their costs that they have to stump up for mica/pyrite blocks, HSE, Public sector pay and pensions, our welfare rates and then we look at our p1ss poor services that they are paying through the nose for and they are not fit for purpose as one poster put it we pay Northern European amounts in taxes for a Eastern European style public service along with L'Oréal rates for welfare and public sector pay and pensions. . The country is banjaxed and giving these gobsh1tes more money to throw on the bonfire that is Ireland Inc is not the way to go, we tried it. 11 Billion this year and 240Billion up until now. This borrowing is and will be a lot more expensive as time goes by. How much more do we have to needlessly throw away before the penny drops that our kids and grand kids are going to pay for this in taxes and an even poorer public service that is unless they have emigrated. It is time to look at what we are spending and hard decisions like telling refugees that we are full and there is no room in the inn is part of it. The country needs a reset starting with a route and branch commission report on spending and our public services and welfare. I find it comical that the powers that be can put one of these together for more taxes when over 90Billion is being spent this year. Its an absolute joke

The baiting? Do you mean that where someone accuses another of being a party bot that they are baiting?

Well actually, they did have regulations in place, but Donegal County Council, among others, didn't implement them (once more we are back to my second favourite topic - the incompetence of local government), we could increase LPT in the areas that are subject to mica, making those counties pay for it themselves. That would be fairer than lumping the whole country with the bill.

For those that are truly interested in polling results, and not the spin that is put on them, here is a website with a methodology of prediction that turns polls into seats.

FF/FG/Greens within 5 seats of being returned.

SF hoovering up the left.

The issue is we have such a surplus as they are squeezing the life out of tax payers and they have the corpo tax which leaves us in the same position pre 08 bust, paying bills using a 20 billion a year windfall in corpo tax that we dont control and can disappear as easily as stamp duty did back in 08 did and this is a disaster waiting to happen (again) I mean over 90 billion spent and we still have one of the worst public services going.

Buyer beware you are you phucking having a laugh? If someone buys something legally in this country under consumer law if its not working or faulty you have the right to return it for a refund or to have it fixed. I don't see why this rule should not apply for the most expensive purchase you will ever buy. Buyer beware will you please stop smelling what your shoveling over there. There are enough people to chase between the quarry owners, the builders, the banks (who provided mortgages) and all of their insurers and the political regulators that should be made pony up for the cash.

We already may a myriad of tases in this country and no more not one cent more in additional taxes should be paid until there is a commission on spend and where we can save on waste, as for LTP I have outlined the myriad of taxes and other costs that the home owner has to pay so no they pay enough already I find it disgusting that you want these people to pay more for an issue they had no hand act or part in.