General Election and Government Formation Megathread (see post #1)

Water John

Is that what Yates has at the start of the campaign?

FrancieBrady

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Donegal poll in the Tír Conaill Tribune:

https://twitter.com/BarryWhyte85/status/1225135746866085893

I thought that is what I heard on the radio alright. Shinners with almost as much of the % vote than the entire rest of the field.

zell12

Water John wrote: »

Is that what Yates has at the start of the campaign?

No. He revises them in the podcast in light of recent polls

is_that_so

zell12 wrote: »

Ivan Yates seats prediction
Fianna Fáil: 60
Fine Gael: 32
Sinn Féin: 25
Green Party: 10
Labour Party: 7
Sol-PBP: 5
Social Democrats: 2
Aontu: 1
Independents: 18

60 looks high for FF in light of recent polls being anyway accurate.

Water John

Can't see that much of a gap between FF and FG.

easypazz

Water John wrote: »

Can't see that much of a gap between FF and FG.

Some shower of muppets in this country if they give fianna fail 60 seats.

Fine gael werent great but fianna fail were much worse.

An Ciarraioch

is_that_so wrote: »

60 looks high for FF in light of recent polls being anyway accurate.

Also seems unlikely that Sol/PBP would only lose one seat.

hotmail.com

sid waddell wrote: »

Do people who are racist get to decide whether they are actually racist or not?

Most racists would not describe themselves as racist. They'd say it's merely their view.

My point was about economic issues and self righteousness and using the term populism.

An Ciarraioch

The moment when FG officially threw in the towel:

https://twitter.com/FineGael/status/1225166488052682754

Itssoeasy

I listened to the final episode of Ivan Yates podcast where he went through the constituencies and after the last one where he changed a few predictions he thinks that FF will get 60 seats including the CC who is returned automatically. He had FG at mid thirties and SF at 25.

I'd say michael Martin would take the hand off a returning officer if he was told that was the number. He'd be a shoe in and not be the only FF leader to not be Taoiseach. So what do people think of that prediction ?

Edit: Should have read the last page.

easypazz

easypazz wrote: »

Some shower of muppets in this country if they give fianna fail 60 seats.

Fine gael werent great but fianna fail were much worse.

Problem is who else is there that can form a govt. I'm a lifelong FG voter, that is until they got into Govt and absolutely screwed me. I'll never vote FG ever again. I'm not saying I'm going to vote FF but I did better under them than FG. SD's will get my #1, same as last election.

Leonard Hofstadter

FF won't get 60 seats on current numbers, they'd want to poll at least 27-28% to do that. Martin did well and it is true that FF do outperform the polls, so they probably will come in around 25-26 and that would get them mid 50s if SF and FG are both a good bit behind that.

FG's 32 seats is believable if they really do get 20 (they got 31 in 2002 on 22.5% of the vote, but there was a lot of bad luck in that one), but after last night's performance I think they and FF will have gained back some of the votes lost to SF and they're more likely to come back with around 40 seats or so.

FG are likely to lose seats in Dún Laoghaire (I expect only one seat they have three now), Meath East, Dublin Bay South, Galway West, Mayo, Wexford and Laois-Offaly. They could even get no seats in Cork South West of all places, entirely possible with Jim Daly not running and Michael Collins is sure to be re-elected. Cork North Central is another possibility for a seat loss, there's only one seat as it is but it was the seat of one Dara Murphy. Waterford might be dodgy. Donegal is dangerous territory, too.

Tipperary will surely get them a seat (no FG seat there at the moment), and Cavan-Monaghan is another possibility.

For FF I see gains right around Dublin, Dún Laoghaire is definite and I'd expect them to remove Lord Ross in Dublin Rathdown.

Brussels Sprout

Of the major parties I think SF are by far the most populist. They peddle a lot of easy answers without ever having a coherent plan for how they could actually implement all of these promises in a balanced way. When pressed, their tactic is to come up with some ill-defined mechanism for generating income that generally wouldn't survive the slightest bit of scrutiny. They have been doing this for years. For example, 15 years ago it was to nationalise all of the oil off the west coast of Ireland. 10 years ago it was to burn the bond holders. In this election it's to implement a wealth tax and to go after the multi-nationals.

They're anti-carbon tax, anti-property tax and oppose raising the retirement age. The property tax stance is particularly galling since this is generally a pillar of left-wing parties around the world since it's a tax on wealth rather than income and yet they oppose it.


Every party has some element of populism though. If they didn't they would not get elected. A classic example was the other night during the climate change debate even Catherine Martin of the Greens wouldn't say that we needed to reduce the number of cattle in this country despite any independent study of the environment and our emissions saying that this is a necessity.

The least populist government we ever had was the first few years of the FG-LAB coalition from 2011 since the IMF were dictating policy and did what they saw as necessary to balance the books as opposed what would be popular.

charlie14

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Donegal poll in the Tír Conaill Tribune:

https://twitter.com/BarryWhyte85/status/1225135746866085893

Heard a bit about this poll on RTE radio and thought they were giving O`Donnell a strong chance for the last seat v Gallagher.
From reading that it seems very unlikely.


2 SF, 1 FG, 2 FF. with Pringle losing to MacLochlainn seems the likely outcome.

charlie14

is_that_so wrote: »

60 looks high for FF in light of recent polls being anyway accurate.

Yates, for all his bluster can be a very canny operator when it comes to calling numbers. That said I would be more inclined to see McGee`s prediction as possibly more credible.
Either way if either of the two is close to the result a disaster for FG with FF leap-frogging them by those kind of numbers.


From Michael Noonan`s promoting of Pascal Donohoe I suspect FG private polling is showing much the same and Varadkar`s days are numbered.


SF predictions before last night and today I would have thought low from both, but now I`m not so sure.

keane2097

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

The moment when FG officially threw in the towel:

https://twitter.com/FineGael/status/1225166488052682754

Did Fianna Fail have a campaign like this in the 90s re:Spring & Bruton?

Brussels Sprout

I went through all 39 constituencies and this was the final tally that I arrived at:

• Fianna Fáil - 56
• Fine Gael - 34
• Sinn Fein - 29
• Greens - 9
• Labour - 8
• Social Democrats - 5
• Solidarity/PBP - 2
• Aontú - 1
• Independents/Other - 16

The interesting thing for me was that despite SF's poll numbers they're running a lot of unknown, most likely no-hopers, in a lot of rural seats

FrancieBrady

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

The moment when FG officially threw in the towel:

https://twitter.com/FineGael/status/1225166488052682754

This from a party whose leader was warning us all this morning about ushering in Trump style politics???

hotmail.com

A SF poll published tonight puts SF on 25, FF on 22 and FG on 17.

Survation up till Feb 2.

L1011

hotmail.com wrote: »

A SF poll published tonight puts SF on 25, FF on 22 and FG on 17.

Survation up till Feb 2.

Another completely untested polling agency in Ireland but **** it; everyones doing it and it ties in with others from the same time

L1011

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

• Fine Gael - 34

Just escaping a Noonan (and with 6 less seats on offer at that) in that case.

An Ciarraioch

hotmail.com wrote: »

A SF poll published tonight puts SF on 25, FF on 22 and FG on 17.

Survation up till Feb 2.

Full party details (allegedly):

https://twitter.com/EOBroin/status/1225189208287010816

hotmail.com

L1011 wrote: »

Another completely untested polling agency in Ireland but **** it; everyones doing it and it ties in with others from the same time

The figures means it's almost impossible to predict the 4th and 5th seats in constituencies, partly because SF isn't running enough candidates. Mad election.

Water John

Brussels Sprout, that puts,
FF + Lb + SD + Green = 78
A few Inds makes it over 80.

Leonard Hofstadter

I'll take any poll commissioned by a political party with a massive grain of salt

An Ciarraioch

All the left parties add up to 48% in the O'Broin poll, which seems rather inflated.

Itssoeasy

hotmail.com wrote: »

A SF poll published tonight puts SF on 25, FF on 22 and FG on 17.

Survation up till Feb 2.

So the Sinn Fein poll is saying that FG will get their lowest percentage of the vote in their history( lowest previously is 19.8 % in 1948 with 31 seats ) ?

I think FG will lose seats but 17 percent isn't happening.

L1011

Itssoeasy wrote: »

So the Sinn Fein poll is saying that FG will get their lowest percentage of the vote in their history( lowest previously is 19.8 % in 1948 with 31 seats ) ?

I think FG will lose seats but 17 percent isn't happening.

Margin of Error on that sample size should be about +/-3%; also its a completely untested polling agency.

Brussels Sprout

L1011 wrote: »

Just escaping a Noonan (and with 6 less seats on offer at that) in that case.

Yes, the big problem for them is that I just can't see them winning 2 seats in many constituencies. The only one I had for them was Dun Laoghaire.

Water John wrote: »

Brussels Sprout, that puts,
FF + Lb + SD + Green = 78
A few Inds makes it over 80.

Yes, but that would be far too unstable so I reckon they'd have to ask FG to go for a C&S agreement which would allow FF + 2 out of the other 3 to form a government.

Itssoeasy

Just for fun the lowest FG percentage of the vote was in 1948 with 19.8 % of the vote and it's highest is in November 1982 with 39.2 % and 70 seats.

FF lowest was 2011 with 17.5 % of the vote and 20 seats. Their highest is 51.9 % and 77 seats in 1939.