General Irish politics discussion thread

It leaves the door open for extremists because they do not need to build any consensus with other parties via a coalition. 

Hold on. Take a few steps back.

Extremist parties first have to win many seats to get a say. As we have seen, that isn't easy in an FPTP system, so how does an extremist party like the BNP win these seats in the first place?

And if they can't form a coalition, so what? They won't be in power.

Again, explain exactly, how does FPTP 'open the door' to extremists..

They just need to get into power even as a minority which very often happens in FPTP. 

How? They would need to outpoll the Labour party and the Tories, to take a UK example. Do you think that is easy?

The last time those 2 parties weren't the top 2, was back in the 1920s when Labour supplanted the Liberal Party as the centre-left broadchurch party of the UK.

PR is much more democratic and its need for negotiation and consensus building makes it very difficult for extremists to gain control of the government

More democratic is debatable, but yes you are half right as PR lends itself to multi-party governments, but as we have just seen in Holland, the PPV, the far-right party of that state are now in government. They are not the only example.

Not so with FPTP which requires little of no consensus.

Again, half right, as FPTP usually lends itself to one broad church centre-left/right party gaining most of the seats even on a minority of the vote. Parties don't need to compromise if they have an overall majority.

But this is not the same thing as letting the 'door open to extremists', in fact as I am trying to argue it is often a bulwark against it as extreme manifestos are usually rejected, e.g. Corbyn and centrist ones are accepted .e.g. Blair/Starmer

If the Tories for some mad reason installed Farage as leader, they will never win the next GE, as he is too extreme for most of the country.

FG selection conventions have to be done by September 22nd; and everyones about to go on holiday so I'd expect we'll see any final retirements imminently - and Simon Coveney has confirmed his now.

This makes it 12 sitting FG/elected as FG (McHugh's FG status is questionable now) TDs.

I am still expecting Durkan to go also and there's rumours about some more.

Yea, France is a bit of a mad system.

Round 2 is for those with buyers remorse and I guess it makes people think harder on their choices.

In Round 1, unless someone gets 50% of the vote, they go to Round 2.

It's like FPTP but with some guardrails and a higher threshold to be elected.

Again though it favours more centrist parties in the long run. Extreme parties who do well in round 1 can be ganged up on, and outvoted in round 2.

I think it's somewhere in between FPTP and STV.

In round 2, if it's apparent that your favoured candidate has no hope of being elected (or if your favoured candidate has withdrawn) you can think about who you would like instead, and vote for them — effectively you get to express a second preference.

Yea, that is a good way of looking at it.
While its technically an FPTP system, the 2 rounds offer a 2nd preference for those who want to change their mind or see their candidate dumped out of it in the 1st round.

Channel 4 did a piece on PR vs FPTP recently.

As always its a trade off.

I much prefer PR-STV obviously but for the likes of the UK, it wouldn't be the worst first step for Westminster elections to adopt the two-round system.

I thought he was going to run in Cork East, but I may be mistaken.

We're now at the "but he got the trains to run on time" stage 🙄

Surely they want to win the seat? He was a very poor MEP candidate, can't see how he'd fare better in a dail election...

It would be funny if it wasn't so terrifying.

Single seats is rubbish, regardless of how you pick the winner.

The Scottish and the Welsh already use the additional member system for their devolved governments. They use the GOAT that is PR-STV in the north. They used use the alternative vote for mayoral elections until the tories did away with that.

The British can handle a new system. The big thing would be to ensure it's independently devised and controlled, avoiding the perception of gerrymandering or collusion.

It'll never happen though.