The decline of FG?

You are just making excuses now without admitting the decilne pictured.

its gonna be either ffg or sf++, and for a very long time, and thats it, so pick a side!

…and by the looks of it, its actually gonna be either ffg or fg ff, and probably all the way through the 30's…..

Which party do you think will get 50% of FP votes in a future GE?

SF are the party in decline Francie. Even your own graph shows you that.

If SF were a football team and they got relegated, you would still be arguing that they won the premier league that year.

The recent trend is what is important Francie, not what happened im the 80s, when a lot of us were not even born.

As I said earlier, no single party is going to get 50% FPVs again. Social media influence and multiple news sources with conflicting messaging means people have broader political bases now, this also means that voting becomes more fragmented.

Take it from 2015 then, what is the trend? That would be down = decline.

Maybe nobody will get 50% (I don't agree BTW) but even if they don't that doesn't mean the decline will stop.
I have posted about the dangers of this tacit merger before, and having seen how disastrous and negative the start of this new government has been I do think the decline is set to continue.

The level of negative press emanating from MSM about a new government is IMO unprecedented and you could see a landslide rejection of the merger. And I am not, before it is assumed, necessarily talking about that landslide being in favour of the Shinners. It could quite easily get behind a SocDem, Lab alliance for instance. We may be seeing a fledgling alliance forming. If it looks like a SocDem/Lab alliance can break the merger/coalition's hold on power it will be getting my vote by the way.

When we were looking at local election trends, you told us we couldn't go back to 2014 to compare with 2024, but now you think it's ok to compare 2015 to 2025 for general election trends???

Just a reminder of that ten-year performance for you.

Sinn Fein went from 15.2% in 2014 to 11.8% in 2024

Is that a decline?

No, I am just looking at ten-year trends like you asked, comparing two identical elections.

You are attempting to shape facts to fit a narative.

Who is 'ignoring'?

The crash happened as a result of how we were governed. Politicians were held responsible for that. You can't handwave away the effect that had on voteshare, That's just illogical.

FF and FG's voteshare has declined because of how they have governed.
If they governed adequately there would have been no space for their competitors to grow.

Trying to say that they are not responsible for where they are at is also illogical.

There is a very strange reluctance to acknowledge that Sinn Fein lost 20% of their voters in the general election, while FF and FG held their voters, despite claims it was the most unpopular government ever.

This same reluctance is reflected in the actions of the Parliamentary Party who have started rows about the numbers of Ministers, the amount of speaking time, and now what a phrase in Irish means in English. It almost looks like Sinn Fein don't know which way the wind is blowing on policy and are figuring that out.

Did Sinn Féin have a bad election in 2024? Yes. Is that a sign of a permanent decline in their support? No. Has there been a more obvious permanent decline in the support levels of FF and FG since the 80s/90s? Obviously yes. It's more pronounced for FF than FG, but it's obvious nonetheless.

yeah they gave it to Fine Gael

You were saying about context and knowing all that… ? You’re ignoring it whilst trying to make your fake news

A more reasonable consideration of the last four or five elections at national and local level would conclude that the long-term decline in support for FF and FG combined has bottomed out and showed signs of recovery since while Sinn Fein have peaked and that the opposition to FF and FG is splintering into more and more pieces as demonstrated by the rise in support for Aontu, II and SDs.

Historic declines are of interest to historians, current and future trends are of interest to politics.

There isn't a decline, there was a decline. The decline coincided with a cataclysmic collapse of the economy but the decline ended quite some time back. It is of historical interest and of little relevance to current politics.