Presidential Election 2025

FF went to the dogs a long time ago. Unfortunately there is no real opposition party in this country. Maybe someday . . .

its worse than that workers are getting a tax rise in real terms

Much tighter race now.

Yes but people will vote differently with 3 people on the ballot rather than 2. I expect it to be a tight race, and there's a not unlikely scenario is that CC will win first count but not above 50%, and then the transfers go to HH, even if it is only a few percent, if that pushes her higher on the second count, people will question whether the equivalent result would have happened if JG was not on the ballot. It'll be a legitimate result don't get me wrong, but it's not great optics.

I already said it, vote Jim and Jim only, and if he wins, what happens then…

Are they really not reprinting the ballots?

I think this is the perfect protest vote now, for many different people and reasons that could all add up.

He certainly could become a protest vote, and having him on the ballot could end up diluting the two other candidates votes significantly too, maybe a lower transfer rate for a second count. If it was a 1 v 1 the results would be much cleaner. I think there are a few scenarios now at play that were not previously. It'll probably become an interesting case study for political science in the future.

Found this article after the 2018 Presidential election discussing the spoiled votes.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/bertie-ahern-donald-trump-dustin-the-turkey-get-votes-in-presidential-election-1.3678373

First paragraph -

“US president Donald Trump, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Dublin football manager Jim Gavin and Dustin the Turkey were among the vote-getters in the presidential election.”

Presumably they will reprint the ballots if they are already printed. His name is hardly going to be on the ballot. That would be stupid.

There must be a tax issue or something else about to break, in my (totally uninformed) opinion. I dont think 3,000 euro he received in error 16 years due to a banking error is a reason to pull out and humiliate MM. He could have spoofed his way around this easily. He thought his wife returned it, he returned it but he must have typed the IBAN wrong. That it was unfortunate that it happened and that he tried to rectify it as soon as he could but something else must have broke down somewhere. That there's no way he would have knowingly taken thousands from renters and then run for president. He could have muddled through and nobody would have cared 2 weeks from now.

The fact that neither he nor MM mentioned the specifics of why he's pulling out, only writing without ambiguity that it's best he does, feels to me like something else is going on.

Normally FF voters would transfer to FG I suppose, but will Jim's voters transfer to HH? Not so sure.. the Jim vote was always weird to me. God only knows what they'll do!

It did occur to me. But then thought nope. Martin not that clever!

I have a feeling this is better for Connolly than Humphreys. Yes, a lot of voters who were going to vote for Gavin #1 and Humphreys #2 will just become Humphreys #1 voters. And as the sole candidate of government she can aim to consolidate support and message/etc.

But there will be a chunk of FF voters who might transfer to FG, but won't vote FG #1 and will just stay at home.

Mortifying for Gavin, politically inept from Micheal Martin and surely means next leader of FF won't be Jack Chambers either...

No. Fianna Fáil's best way of getting the Fine Gael candidate elected would be to do as well as they can, and transfer as much as they can, while focusing all of their efforts on attacking Catherine Connolly. Which is exactly what Micheál Martin was doing until a few days ago. It's highly unlikely that anywhere near 100% of FF's voters will move over to the FG candidate.

But any vote for him will just fall under spoiled vote right?

To me it's not that confusing. They just need to get the people handing out the ballot papers to tell voters that Jim is no longer running, and draw a line through his name with a marker. If there is any vote against his name, the vote will be spoiled. If someone puts a 1 against his name and a 2 against HH, it will be treated the same as if someone put a 1 beside a scribbled Kanye West name and a 2 beside HH.

I hope they don't re print the ballot sheets for this, God what a waste that would be.

latest odds from the Bookmakers, Connolly 4/6 .Humphreys 5/4. According to the bookies Connolly now a certainty.