Presidential Election 2025

He's still a nobody....

The choice of candidates been put up to the people of Ireland is pretty poor and all it does is highlight the change required so that anybody can run for president.

Anybody can run for president. Join a party, get support that way. Or lobby the local authorities and get support that way. Start your campaign well out from the election, get a groundswell of support and you'll be hard to ignore.

But don't expect to get nominated if you are a "celebrity" or somebody who has come to the idea with weeks to go. No preparation, no laying of ground work? Don't expect to get nominated.

The European elections have shown what a farce it is if the threshold to entry is too low (23 candidates in Dublin and Ireland south last time out, 27 in Midlands north West), there should be an element of difficulty in getting onto the paper.

You misunderstand what I was saying. Before anyone was counting (because there was nobody else to count at the time), when AK stood against Connolly, that hurt her chances, because AK has his supporters and the Labour party is not united as one behind her.

People in FG don't support Humphreys and indicated support for Kelly, ditto in FF. No biggie that there is someone in Labour dissenting. Less of a biggie when the same guy has a penchant for dissent.

Ah I see.

So when Connolly was getting cosy with the Assad regime would that be someone who is representative?

SF have it in the bag now if they want it, they just need to go all in with a high profile candidate.

On the run of it percentagewise a good SF candidate could get over the line first 

Not seeing who this could be other than Big Mac herself. Maybe Pearse Doherty but I'd be very surprised if he was interested…

Her overall politics of the left would be shared (to greater and lesser degrees) with the likes of Labour, social Democrats and PBP. Hence they nominated her.

Her supporting or at least engaging with Syria is a mistake and something she needs to properly account for. But it's not her defining trait. Whereas Maria Steen has 1 element to her politics (catholic fundamentalist, anti abortion, anti divorce, etc). If she was a broader politician then maybe she might get some support elsewhere.

They can normalise the idea of reunification in the south, which will be useful for a future referendum campaign. A campaign started cold with a SF government would be difficult. If we are talking about a 10 year plan for referendums then a SF presidency now would be very useful.

Before Kelly spoke she was on 18%. After Kelly spoke she is on 20%.

I'd say she wants Kelly to keep talking. 😀

I would take zero notice of those polls. The campaign is theoretical at this stage. For instance, as Gavin is a FF candidate he will not be allowed to speak his mind or be honest during a campaign, so he will be wiped out during a campaign.

That opinion poll last night must surely be giving SF an incentive to run a very high profile candidate and not another Ní Riada. Looks like the electorate are finding Gavin, Connolly and Humphreys rather underwhelming.

I'm not convinced the incentive is much stronger than it was a week ago. It's been clear for a while that Connolly is a meh candidate with limited appeal for the soft left. Poll also suggests combined FF-FG vote is holding up okay. If Mary Lou joined the race she would probably be favourite but it's far from

There is a shot across the bows for declared and potential left wing candidates in the Sunday Independent poll where just 3% of respondents said a candidate's view on Gaza was important to them which is interesting.