Irish people not as ignorant as originally thought?

O'Morris

I was reading a thread over on the politics.ie site that linked to this entry on the Open Europe blog. It shows that the figure for people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty is lower than the 40% figure originally mentioned by the EU commission and repeated in the UK version of the Times newspaper. According to the Eurobarometer poll the actual figure is 22%, not 40%.

And before people start complaining that it's Open Europe, a British eurosceptic group with an agenda of their own, the figures are taken from an independent Eurobarometer poll that was carried out in the aftermath of the referendum and published on June 20th. A link is given on that blog where you can download the report and see for yourself. The list of reasons are clearly lined out with the "don't understands" coming in at just 22%.

I'm not sure if this is news to other people or if the 22% figure and the Eurobarometer poll in which it was contained were widely commented upon in this forum but I've seen several references to the higher percentage and I've never seen it challenged so I assumed that it was the generally accepted figure.

Can we at least agree that 22% seems to be the most up-to-date and accurate figure?

Scofflaw

O'Morris wrote: »

I was reading a thread over on the politics.ie site that linked to this entry on the Open Europe blog. It shows that the figure for people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty is lower than the 40% figure originally mentioned by the EU commission and repeated in the Irish Times. According to the Eurobarometer poll the actual figure is 22%, not 40%.

And before people start complaining that it's Open Europe, a British eurosceptic group with an agenda of their own, the figures are taken from an independent Eurobarometer poll that was carried out in the aftermath of the referendum and published on June 20th. A link is given on that blog where you can download the report and see for yourself. The list of reasons are clearly lined out with the "don't understands" coming in at just 22%.

I'm not sure if this is news to other people or if the 22% figure and the Eurobarometer poll in which it was contained were widely commented upon in this forum but I've seen several references to the higher percentage and I've never seen it challenged so I assumed that it was the generally accepted figure.

Can we at least agree that 22% seems to be the most up-to-date and accurate figure?

Hmm. Does Open Europe link to somewhere where the Commission says it's 40%, or is this entirely to be taken on trust? Certainly the only figure I've used in discussions here (and everyone else too, I think) is the 22% figure - I don't think anyone needs "updating", unless you do.

Come to think of it, the 40% figure is from the last IT/MRBI poll before the referendum.

Sorry, hang on - do you or Open Europe have any evidence for this claim that the Commission put out a false figure?

Or a link to an Irish Times article that uses the figure?

cordially,
Scofflaw

molloyjh

O'Morris wrote: »

I was reading a thread over on the politics.ie site that linked to this entry on the Open Europe blog. It shows that the figure for people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty is lower than the 40% figure originally mentioned by the EU commission and repeated in the Irish Times. According to the Eurobarometer poll the actual figure is 22%, not 40%.

And before people start complaining that it's Open Europe, a British eurosceptic group with an agenda of their own, the figures are taken from an independent Eurobarometer poll that was carried out in the aftermath of the referendum and published on June 20th. A link is given on that blog where you can download the report and see for yourself. The list of reasons are clearly lined out with the "don't understands" coming in at just 22%.

I'm not sure if this is news to other people or if the 22% figure and the Eurobarometer poll in which it was contained were widely commented upon in this forum but I've seen several references to the higher percentage and I've never seen it challenged so I assumed that it was the generally accepted figure.

Can we at least agree that 22% seems to be the most up-to-date and accurate figure?

I think a lot of the confusion on this depends heavily on what we term as "ignorant". The results of the survey say that 22% of people said the voted No because they didn't understand the Treaty. If this is what we term as ignorant then yes the 40% figure is wrong.

However if you look at the other reasons for voting No:
We will lose our right to have an Irish Commissioner in every Commission - 6%
To protect our tax system - 6%
Because the largest Member States decide on EU matters - 4%
It would allow the introduction of Europeanm legislation in Ireland, such as gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia - 2%
It could be said that these and/or other reasons show "ignorance" of the Treaty which could account for the 40% figure.

Having looked at the article you are referring to it would seem that it is being factually inaccurate alright (8% wanted to protect our tax system even though the Gallup poll says 6%) however most articles, and discussions here too, have been focused on the true figure (as in the true Gallup figure) of 22%.

Take this Irish Times article for example:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0620/breaking74.html

The main reason given by No voters for their decision was what they believed to be a lack of information about the treaty (22 per cent) followed by the desire to protect Irish identity (12 per cent).

Scofflaw - the link refers to the UK Times rather than the Irish Times, which is probably why none of us heard or saw it before. And I should add, why is the article dated 08th June? I'm sure it's just a typo, but still......

Scofflaw

molloyjh wrote: »

Scofflaw - the link refers to the UK Times rather than the Irish Times, which is probably why none of us heard or saw it before.

That makes more sense - however O'Morris' post says it's the Irish Times:

It shows that the figure for people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty is lower than the 40% figure originally mentioned by the EU commission and repeated in the Irish Times.

Perhaps he might edit his post?

cordially,
Scofflaw

O'Morris

Scofflaw wrote:

Hmm. Does Open Europe link to somewhere where the Commission says it's 40%, or is this entirely to be taken on trust?

It links to a document named commission poll. It seems to have been compiled for the EU commission but I don't know who was behind it.

Reading through some of it, it seems like a very shoddy and a not altogether unbiased piece of work. One example:

Youngsters, 15-29, have many more "no voters" than "yes voters". Factor 2 to 1. Very Serious!

Scofflaw wrote:

Sorry, hang on - do you or Open Europe have any evidence for this claim that the Commission put out a false figure?

I don't. I don't know if Open Europe does either.

Scofflaw wrote:

Or a link to an Irish Times article that uses the figure?

I was wrong when I said Irish Times. I see now that it's the Times of London that they were referring to.

Scofflaw wrote:

Sorry, hang on - do you or Open Europe have any evidence for this claim that the Commission put out a false figure?

I don't have any evidence and I can't speak for the Open Europe people. I'm more interested in the fact that the original figure given for people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty was much higher than the actual figure in the Eurobarometer poll. I've never seen the 22% figure referred to on this site but I have seen the 40% figure once so I assumed that it was a figure that was generally accepted. I've only read through a few of the threads though so I probably just missed all the references to the 22%. I did a search on the site but it didn't return any results for either figure in this forum.

I don't believe that the EU commission deliberately misrepresented the figures but I do think that the EUer's and the yes voters might have been tempted to exaggerate the true level of voter ignorance as a way to try and invalidate the results of the referendum and prepare the way for a second one. When the evidence showed that the true figure was lower than the "preliminary" one, I think the yes people may have also been tempted to overlook this fact and continue to focus a disproportionate amount of their attention on the issue of voter ignorance.

Scofflaw wrote:

That makes more sense - however O'Morris' post says it's the Irish Times:

I was wrong, I see now that it's the UK Times and not the Irish Times. I've edited the post to correct this mistake.

molloyjh wrote:

We will lose our right to have an Irish Commissioner in every Commission - 6%

That's a matter of debate rather than ignorance. Voting no to the Lisbon Treaty might not have been a sufficient step for holding on to our commissioner but it would have been a necessary first step in the process.

Even if you include that 6% though that still only brings it up to 28%

molloyjh wrote:

To protect our tax system - 6%

That's not based on ignorance. Didn't a leading Irish economist advise that we should vote against the treaty for just that reason? Shane Ross also gave it as a reason for his decision to vote no.

molloyjh wrote:

Because the largest Member States decide on EU matters - 4%

That's not based on ignorance either. The bigger countries share of the vote in the EU parliament would have been increased under the Lisbon Treaty while Ireland's would have been reduced.

molloyjh wrote:

It would allow the introduction of Europeanm legislation in Ireland, such as gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia - 2%

Can the EU not legislate on these kinds of things? As the EU has shared competetence on social policy it's not inconceivable that at some future date the EU will be able to impose legislation that conflicts with our laws covering those those three areas.

The Lisbon Treaty might not have directly led to the introduction of gay marriage or abortion but I think it might have given them the kind of power that would have made the likelihood of this kind of thing happening all the greater. Whether or not this is the case is debatable but I can't see anything in the Lisbon Treaty that would rule it out either.

molloyjh wrote:

It could be said that these and/or other reasons show "ignorance" of the Treaty which could account for the 40% figure.

No they couldn't. Ignorance implies unfamiliarity with the facts. There is no fact in the Lisbon Treaty that rules out the possibility that the EU can interfere with our tax system. If there had been a declaration explicitly securing each member states sovereignty over taxation, and if people still gave taxation as a reason for voting no then it would be fair to call those people ignorant.

corkstudent

Honestly I doubt anyone much had a clue, but people still like to think they're "informed". I refuse to believe that 80% of the Irish people could have made sense of that ****e.

oscarBravo

O'Morris wrote: »

There is no fact in the Lisbon Treaty that rules out the possibility that the EU can interfere with our tax system.

There doesn't need to be. Direct taxation isn't an EU competence, and Lisbon wouldn't have made it so.

If there had been a declaration explicitly securing each member states sovereignty over taxation, and if people still gave taxation as a reason for voting no then it would be fair to call those people ignorant.

Such a declaration was no more needed than one stating that the EU won't require us to breed unicorns in our spare time.

Scofflaw

O'Morris wrote: »

It links to a document named commission poll. It seems to have been compiled for the EU commission but I don't know who was behind it.

Reading through some of it, it seems like a very shoddy and a not altogether unbiased piece of work.

It also seems like a very tentative piece of work...it actually say "but please...these are very first, very soft, very tentative data".

O'Morris wrote: »

I don't have any evidence and I can't speak for the Open Europe people. I'm more interested in the fact that the original figure given for people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty was much higher than the actual figure in the Eurobarometer poll. I've never seen the 22% figure referred to on this site but I have seen the 40% figure once so I assumed that it was a figure that was generally accepted. I've only read through a few of the threads though so I probably just missed all the references to the 22%. I did a search on the site but it didn't return any results for either figure in this forum.

I don't believe that the EU commission deliberately misrepresented the figures but I do think that the EUer's and the yes voters might have been tempted to exaggerate the true level of voter ignorance as a way to try and invalidate the results of the referendum and prepare the way for a second one. When the evidence showed that the true figure was lower than the "preliminary" one, I think the yes people may have also been tempted to overlook this fact and continue to focus a disproportionate amount of their attention on the issue of voter ignorance.

That's an impressive set of might-have-beens. The 22% figure was released on the 18th of June (the Flash Eurobarometer is here), and the only source that seems to have ever used the 40% figure is the Times themselves.

Frankly, if they used the figure from the scrap of photocopy that Open Europe have as "Commission Poll", then they were very silly. If Open Europe think there's some sort of "case" here, they are even sillier.

After al little search, here's my first mention of it, at least - the 26th of June.

O'Morris wrote: »

I was wrong, I see now that it's the UK Times and not the Irish Times. I've edited the post to correct this mistake.

Ta!

O'Morris wrote: »

That's a matter of debate rather than ignorance. Voting no to the Lisbon Treaty might not have been a sufficient step for holding on to our commissioner but it would have been a necessary first step in the process.

Other way round. We can't hang on to the Commissioner under Nice, but could under Lisbon.

O'Morris wrote: »

Even if you include that 6% though that still only brings it up to 28%

That's not based on ignorance. Didn't a leading Irish economist advise that we should vote against the treaty for just that reason? Shane Ross also gave it as a reason for his decision to vote no.

That's not based on ignorance either. The bigger countries share of the vote in the EU parliament would have been increased under the Lisbon Treaty while Ireland's would have been reduced.

Can the EU not legislate on these kinds of things? As the EU has shared competetence on social policy it's not inconceivable that at some future date the EU will be able to impose legislation that conflicts with our laws covering those those three areas.

The Lisbon Treaty might not have directly led to the introduction of gay marriage or abortion but I think it might have given them the kind of power that would have made the likelihood of this kind of thing happening all the greater. Whether or not this is the case is debatable but I can't see anything in the Lisbon Treaty that would rule it out either.

No they couldn't. Ignorance implies unfamiliarity with the facts. There is no fact in the Lisbon Treaty that rules out the possibility that the EU can interfere with our tax system. If there had been a declaration explicitly securing each member states sovereignty over taxation, and if people still gave taxation as a reason for voting no then it would be fair to call those people ignorant.

Actually, it would be more that 52% of those who didn't vote, plus 22% of those who voted No, gave as their principal reason that they didn't feel they sufficiently understood the Treaty. All told, you;re looking at roughly a million voters who felt they were in the dark - which is a lot.

cordially,
Scofflaw

molloyjh

O'Morris wrote: »

That's a matter of debate....

As you said. Basically that 40% could be made up of the 22% plus a combination of others. If you have an issue with that take it up with the Times, I didn't define it. I was simply pointing out what they may have done.

To deal with the remainder of your points would mean straying off topic. If you want to discuss the Treaty itself we can do that in (yet another) seperate thread on the matter. All of those points have been discussed to death at this stage though.

ressem

oscarBravo wrote: »

There doesn't need to be. Direct taxation isn't an EU competence, and Lisbon wouldn't have made it so. Such a declaration was no more needed than one stating that the EU won't require us to breed unicorns in our spare time.

Setting the rate isn't an EU competency.

The worry is that the commission will leverage competencies such as removing competitive distortions to push Ireland into making decisions that negatively effect business here.

You've noticed that a lot of arguments don't distinguish between the efforts and arguments against attempts to harmonize the tax base (rules) and the rate (12.5%).

The CCCTB WG's, and according to them, the Commissions, stated objective is to unify the corporate tax base across the EU, and this was one of the aims of the current French Presidency.
(http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/company_tax/common_tax_base/index_en.htm)

In the pre-Lisbon treaty Article 93 had set Dec 1992 as the end date for legislation towards the harmonisation of indirect taxes. The Lisbon treaty would have removed this time limit allowing the issue to be raised again in the interest of avoiding distortion.

And it would appear that this issue does shadow a competency of the EU.

Do you not think that the proposals discussed by the Commission to remove incentives which encourage companies to register in one jurisdiction over another might have an impact on Irish tax take?
This includes splitting taxes on profits across the member states in which the company does business.

O'Morris

corkstudent wrote:

I refuse to believe that 80% of the Irish people could have made sense of that ****e.

I think we need to make a distinction as well between people who made no effort to inform themselves about the treaty and therefore couldn't have understood what was contained in it and those people who did make an effort to educate themselves on it's contents but still didn't understand what was being proposed in the treaty. There's an important difference between the two.

Ulick McEvaddy read the treaty at least twice and he still didn't understand it. If he had been polled he would have probably been included in the "don't understand" group.

Scofflaw wrote:

That's an impressive set of might-have-beens. The 22% figure was released on the 18th of June (the Flash Eurobarometer is here), and the only source that seems to have ever used the 40% figure is the Times themselves.

I would be very surprised if it was only used in that one newspaper article. The EU summit took place a week after the referendum and a few days before the results of the Eurobarometer poll were released so I'm sure the 40% figure got a mention there as well.

Scofflaw wrote:

Frankly, if they used the figure from the scrap of photocopy that Open Europe have as "Commission Poll", then they were very silly. If Open Europe think there's some sort of "case" here, they are even sillier.

I think there might be something in the timing. I can see how useful that 40% figure would have been for the other EU leaders during the EU summit in pressuring the Irish government to consider a rerun of the referendum. I can how an easily pluckable figure showing a high level of ignorance of the treaty might have come in very handy.

Scofflaw wrote:

Actually, it would be more that 52% of those who didn't vote, plus 22% of those who voted No, gave as their principal reason that they didn't feel they sufficiently understood the Treaty.

Do you have any corresponding data for the people who voted yes? Do you know how many of them voted yes even though they didn't understand the treaty? Is it 0%?

Also, are you aware of any attempts to objectively verify whether or not the informed yes voters really are as informed as they claim to be?

Scofflaw wrote:

All told, you;re looking at roughly a million voters who felt they were in the dark - which is a lot.

And that's just the people who admitted to not understanding it. When you include all those people who didn't admit to not understanding it the figure is probably closer to 2 million.

O'Morris

oscarBravo wrote:

Such a declaration was no more needed than one stating that the EU won't require us to breed unicorns in our spare time.

I didn't say it was needed (although I do think it's needed but that's a separate issue). I was making the point that without a declaration on taxation there are no grounds to claim that people who voted no because of concerns over taxation were voting out of ignorance. There is no fact in the Lisbon Treaty to contradict the view that our corporate tax policy is under threat from EU interference.

molloyjh wrote:

As you said. Basically that 40% could be made up of the 22% plus a combination of others.

I don't think so. As I've said, ignorance implies unfamiliarity with the facts. If there are any facts in the Lisbon Treaty that an extra 18% of the no voters are unfamiliar with then it would be correct to say that they voted out of ignorance. However, if you can't find any facts in the treaty contradicting them then you can't add them to the ignorant group.

molloyjh wrote:

To deal with the remainder of your points would mean straying off topic.

It's not straying off topic. You thought it was relevant to the discussion to extend the definition of ignorance to include issues that are not related to matters of fact.

If you think that people who voted no to the Lisbon Treaty because they were worried about the consequences for our neutrality or our taxation policy should be grouped in with the ignorant people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty then I think it's worth responding to that point.

If you want to discuss the Treaty itself we can do that in (yet another) seperate thread on the matter. All of those points have been discussed to death at this stage though.

I think it's worth dealing with the specific point on what constitutes ignorance though.

molloyjh

O'Morris wrote: »

I didn't say it was needed (although I do think it's needed but that's a separate issue). I was making the point that without a declaration on taxation there are no grounds to claim that people who voted no because of concerns over taxation were voting out of ignorance. There is no fact in the Lisbon Treaty to contradict the view that our corporate tax policy is under threat from EU interference.




I don't think so. As I've said, ignorance implies unfamiliarity with the facts. If there are any facts in the Lisbon Treaty that an extra 18% of the no voters are unfamiliar with then it would be correct to say that they voted out of ignorance. However, if you can't find any facts in the treaty contradicting them then you can't add them to the ignorant group.




It's not straying off topic. You thought it was relevant to the discussion to extend the definition of ignorance to include issues that are not related to matters of fact.

If you think that people who voted no to the Lisbon Treaty because they were worried about the consequences for our neutrality or our taxation policy should be grouped in with the ignorant people who voted no because they didn't understand the treaty then I think it's worth responding to that point.


I think it's worth dealing with the specific point on what constitutes ignorance though.

Ok first off, I was not making any judgements in my post. I was merely stating a possibility about what the Time had done. My personal beliefs did not factor into that. All I said was that it was possible that the Times grouped the reasons in such a way as to come up with the 40%. I only felt it nessecary to point out that the Times may have defined the ignorance thing differently to you or I. I'm not sure why it matters anymore anyway given that it would appear they were the only ones to display this figure.

Secondly, our corporation tax is not under any threat from Lisbon. The EU was not set to gain any extra powers over direct taxation (which corporation tax is) with the Treaty. So to say that it threatened our corporation tax showed a certain level of ignorance of the facts.

We also retain our veto on any matters of military or defense as part of the Treaty so there was no change to our position here either. People who thought there were changes were ignorant of the facts.

By going off topic I mean we started talking about where the Times got this 40% figure. I just said maybe they defined ignorance with a broader stroke than everyone else. The topic is swiftly turning to whether particular reasons showed ignorance or not. It doesn't matter given that we don't know how the 40% figure was reached. It may have been completely made up for all we know.

Scofflaw

O'Morris wrote: »

I think we need to make a distinction as well between people who made no effort to inform themselves about the treaty and therefore couldn't have understood what was contained in it and those people who did make an effort to educate themselves on it's contents but still didn't understand what was being proposed in the treaty. There's an important difference between the two.

Ulick McEvaddy read the treaty at least twice and he still didn't understand it. If he had been polled he would have probably been included in the "don't understand" group.

I do hope that won't damage Mr McEvaddy's business reputation! Unfortunately, there seems no obvious way of distinguishing between the ignorant and the 'iggerant' - those who couldn't, and those who didn't try. Simply asking people is going to produce a rather inflated number for the first group.

Mind you, we also need to weed out a third group - those who claimed not to understand while simultaneously claiming to understand it all too well.

O'Morris wrote: »

I would be very surprised if it was only used in that one newspaper article. The EU summit took place a week after the referendum and a few days before the results of the Eurobarometer poll were released so I'm sure the 40% figure got a mention there as well.

I strongly doubt that. Try a little search through politics.ie, and you'll find that there's a link to the actual Flash Eurobarometer results on June 20th - here. So if p.ie posters had access to the proper results (not Open Europe's scrap of paper) via an official website 8 days after the referendum, I somehow doubt the real results were not available to the EU summit a day earlier.

O'Morris wrote: »

I think there might be something in the timing. I can see how useful that 40% figure would have been for the other EU leaders during the EU summit in pressuring the Irish government to consider a rerun of the referendum. I can how an easily pluckable figure showing a high level of ignorance of the treaty might have come in very handy.

The timing is wrong. What seems more likely is that the Times ran a story based of extremely tentative numbers. Nobody else seems to have done so - you're welcome to dig up another example, but the IT certainly didn't publish anything with that 40% figure.

O'Morris wrote: »

Do you have any corresponding data for the people who voted yes? Do you know how many of them voted yes even though they didn't understand the treaty? Is it 0%?

It's a good question, but unfortunately it was never actually asked as a question. The "don't understand/don't know" only comes up as a reason given for voting No (or not voting). It's unlikely that people would give "don't understand" as a reason for voting Yes.

O'Morris wrote: »

Also, are you aware of any attempts to objectively verify whether or not the informed yes voters really are as informed as they claim to be?

I'm not aware of any attempt to objectively verify whether anybody understood the Treaty. That would have involved a series of questions designed specifically to test people's knowledge and understanding.

I've been tempted occasionally to put up a survey myself, but I have no way to make it representative as such.

O'Morris wrote: »

And that's just the people who admitted to not understanding it. When you include all those people who didn't admit to not understanding it the figure is probably closer to 2 million.

Quite probably!

cordially,
Scofflaw

molloyjh

O'Morris wrote: »

The EU summit took place a week after the referendum and a few days before the results of the Eurobarometer poll were released so I'm sure the 40% figure got a mention there as well.

What makes you so sure? We don't even know where or how the Times came up with their 40% figure. And according to your link the Times article (which wasn't actually an article, but a Matt Cooper blog) was written on the 18th June. That was the date that the preliminary results of the poll were released. There is no change in the figures between the preliminary results and the final results:

Preliminary - http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_245_en.pdf

Final - http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_245_full_en.pdf


As it turns out though the Irish Times also quoted that 40% figure on the 17th and 18th:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0617/breaking93.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0618/1213735259849.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0618/1213735259853.html

As you can see from the last article the total percentage figure is 105%, so there are obviously issues with the data they were using at the time. However the Irish Times has since come back (2 days later) with the 22% figure as seen in the link in my first post. Other than Matt Coopers blog I haven't found anything in the UK Times about the poll at all.

Scofflaw

molloyjh wrote: »

What makes you so sure? We don't even know where or how the Times came up with their 40% figure. And according to your link the Times article (which wasn't actually an article, but a Matt Cooper blog) was written on the 18th June. That was the date that the preliminary results of the poll were released. There is no change in the figures between the preliminary results and the final results:

Preliminary - http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_245_en.pdf

Final - http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_245_full_en.pdf


As it turns out though the Irish Times also quoted that 40% figure on the 17th and 18th:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0617/breaking93.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0618/1213735259849.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0618/1213735259853.html

As you can see from the last article the total percentage figure is 105%, so there are obviously issues with the data they were using at the time. However the Irish Times has since come back (2 days later) with the 22% figure as seen in the link in my first post. Other than Matt Coopers blog I haven't found anything in the UK Times about the poll at all.

You're obviously better at digging in the IT archives than me! Yes, they must have used those figures, because they all match.

What's scary is the way the articles don't repeat the very large warnings plastered all over the original piece of paper!

cordially,
Scofflaw