Can more Independents become Senators?

edanto

There's always been a good number of Senators that are Independents, about a sixth of the last Seanad were - but I'm wondering do you think many more Independents will get in on the back of the 13 Independents that made it into the Dail.

The last Seanad had 9/60 Independents (15%) and people thought it was a big swing in this new Dail when there are 8% Independents. Could that swell in the Dail have any impact on the Seanad elections? What's that process like - I'm not fully up to date on who votes for who.

I've never really gotten that interested before in who is in the Seanad, but I am this time since it might be the last election if it's abolished.

Is there any way to find out who voted for whom last time, or is it a secret ballot? Are nominations secret?

Is there much publicity about who is going forward for nominations? I see the odd newspaper mention about it, but can't find a list anywhere.

There's a list available on the Oireachtas page - a provisional list of candidates -
http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/a-misc/ProvisionalList_of_Candidates2011.doc

but it doesn't say anything about who is with which party! I recognise one or two of the names as being people that failed to get elected to the Dail, and I guess are being pushed into the Senate by their parties.

Any idea who the independents are?

edanto

If anyone's interested in a more accessible version of the document above I've converted into a Google Doc that anyone with the link can edit

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlpFGDStdzWCdGhrTm5qNEVvRWNIeHR3NFNheDhHR1E&hl=en&authkey=CLfLwbML

If you know which party someone is with, fill it in!

Peregrinus

OK. You’ve got your six senators elected by graduates of TCD and NUI. Independents have traditionally done well there. Then you have your eleven senators nominated by the Taoiseach of the day. Independents sometimes do well there, too, but it entirely depends on the Taoiseach. He won’t make his nominations until all the other places have been filled, so he knows what kind of numbers of party hacks he needs to give the government a comfortable majority.

The other senators - 43 in all - are elected by a constituency consisting of elected members of local governments (county councillors, city councillors, etc) and TDs.

They are elected in five different panels - Cultural and Educational, Agricultural, Labour and so on. The original idea was that they would represent the nation not divided up geographically, in territorial constituencies, but vocationally, according to sectors of economic activity. (The idea was borrowed from Mussolini, incidentally.) And what distinguishes the various panels is the bodies that have rights to nominate candidates. If you look at the Agricultural Panel, for instance, you’ll see that candidates get nominated by the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders Association, ICOS, the Munster Agricultural Society, etc.

But, regardless of who nominates the candidates in each panel, the senators in all the panels are elected by the same voters - local government councillors and TDs. Each councillor/TD gets five votes, one for each panel. And, since the voters are not particularly representative of the various sectors of the economy, and since they are highly politicised people, they mostly vote along party lines. Thus the vocational representation idea for the Senate has never really worked.

Voting is by secret ballot, so you can’t find out who voted for who. Because the total electorate is quite small - something like seventeen hundred people - canvassing is mostly direct and personal, so unless you are a councillor or a TD you really aren’t going to know very much about the candidates or their stances, or how they distinguish themselves from other candidates in the same panel.

The total vote for independent candidates in the recent general election was nearly 13% - and that’s not counting the vote for minor parties like the Socialist Party, PBP, the Greens, Christian Solidarity, etc. But there is no reason to expect a similar vote for Independents and minor parties in the Senate election, since the Senate voters are mostly politicians with fairly strong party loyalties. Nor should you expect the same collapse in the FF vote that we saw in the Dail elections.

Don’t look at the recent Dail elections; look at the last local elections, in 2009. Fianna Fail came out of those with about 400 seats (out of about 1600) - a bad result at the time; they lost more than 130 seats. But it still left them with about 25% of the seats, as opposed to the 12% of Dail seats that they have just secured. So expect FF-aligned candidates in the Senate elections to get something like 25% of the first-preference votes.

Independent councillors hold 275, or about 17%, of local government seats, but their will be nothing like the same kind of voting discipline among independent councillors that FF would expect - or at leats hope for - among FF councillors. An independent councillor is not going to vote for an independent candidate purely because he is independent.

There were 265 Independent councillors at the last Senate election, but no independent councillors were elected from the vocational panels. Of the nine Independent members of the current Senate, six were elected from the university constituencies, one (Eoghan Harris) was nominated as an independent by the Taoiseach and two were nominated by the Taoiseach as Progressive Democrats, but became independents on the dissolution of that party.

So if 265 Independent councillors failed to elect any independent senators, I doubt that 275 will enjoy much greater success. The only way the number of Independents in the Senate will be significantly increased will be if Enda Kenny decides to nominate a significant number of Independent Senators.

edanto

Very interesting and fact filled reply, thanks!

Seems like all the Seanad election to and fro happens in secret, the canvassing, the voting etc, so it's less of a spectator sport than the Dail election.

I guess there aren't any polls that are made public either, probably just party people phoning each other and trading votes.

Your last point about the unlikihood that independent councillors will elect an independent senator is very resonant.

ISAW

Peregrinus wrote: »

OK. You’ve got your six senators elected by graduates of TCD and NUI. Independents have traditionally done well there.

But of the people running for these seats many are already under the Labour Party but whip put down "Independent" on the Ballot Paper.

Additionally Ross who is now an Independent TD was a FG candidate in his time.

Then you have your eleven senators nominated by the Taoiseach of the day. Independents sometimes do well there, too, but it entirely depends on the Taoiseach. He won’t make his nominations until all the other places have been filled, so he knows what kind of numbers of party hacks he needs to give the government a comfortable majority.

It won't really matter because FG did so well in the last local Election coupled with 77 Dail votes and the outgoing FG Senators they will dominate the Panel election.

http://electionsireland.org/results/local/2009local.cfm

FG 340 and Lab 132 of 883 seats with FF on 218.
FG 76 Lab 37 and FF 20 Dail seats

Tot FG416 Lab 169 FF238 of 1049 votes



So if 265 Independent councillors failed to elect any independent senators, I doubt that 275 will enjoy much greater success. The only way the number of Independents in the Senate will be significantly increased will be if Enda Kenny decides to nominate a significant number of Independent Senators.[/QUOTE]

Or the University voters don't vote for party people who have run for parties in the past and accepted the party whip in the senate.