Presidential Election 2025

The fact that she cannot, and refuses to answer basic questions like "Is Russia a threat to European democracy", "Do you accept Putin doesn't want peace, he wants victory over Ukraine", etc, while completely disingenously both-siding the situation and ranting about NATO and military industrial complexes is an absurdly huge red flag for many people.

I think you're confusing the relative importance you place on the matter in comparison to it's relative importance to others….Thus, there's a fair bit of disingenuousness here….

Does her position on Ukraine really matter though? The government will be firmly in command of all aspects of foreign policy towards Ukraine and Russia, as well as how we handle Ukrainian refugees etc. Given that FF and FG are strongly in Ukraine's corner, I'm not sure we would see many controversies with a CC presidency regarding Ukraine.

Indo poll last weekend, discussed at length here. That figure had been fairly consistent in political polls for quite a period of time.

For all the people who said they'd vote Heather because she would be more likely to sit back and just do the minimum (welcoming dignitaries, going to sports games) - how do you square this circle? Your candidate now wants to create new responsibilities for the office of president which could have actual tangible repercussions for this country.

Do you really think Heather the not so great orator would be our best representative for trade missions?

She didn't want to run as a TD, it's a different and more demanding job than president..

“The latest Business Post/Red C Poll has put Connolly on 36 per cent, Humphreys on 25 per cent and Gavin on 12 per cent. Some 27 per cent of voters were undecided.

31% to 39% when Gavins votes redistributed

And when undecided removed, it’s 56% to 44% in favour of CC
.”

My first thought is- it’s still a significant lead.

Whilst the SBP highlights CC’s younger voters as a “risk”- I’m not so sure it is- there’s a unanimous young vote for CC and as we saw in the last general election, a considerable % of young voters came out to vote for SF- I see them coming out again to support CC.

HH just doesn’t have the same following - the older voter demographic , if they come out on the day, will vote for her - and they outweigh the younger voter nearly 2:1- but I think we’ll see a lot of older voters staying away, simply because either their “man” isn’t running- or they don’t feel overly motivated by HH.

Will the “undecided” play it cautious and vote HH? Personally I think they’ll just stay away- something is stopping them choosing one candidate over the other in a 2/3 horse race -I don’t think that will change in the next 10 days or so.

It’s CC’s to lose

Yeah, in fairness, in this two horse race all of the key media outlets are pro HH and certainly the SBP which as an aside has deteriorated significantly since McConnell took over.

I see Coleman had the same column as last week just this week it's about HH not JG, clearly hasn't learned his lesson..

The problem isn't the analysis of the poll, it is with the data itself. The sample period is split over two major periods. The first is with Gavin as a candidate. Most of the data was, theoretically, collected in this period. The second is without Gavin as a candidate. This makes any conclusions drawn somewhat iffy because it is, in effect, two different polls rolled into one. The data from the first isn't distinguished from the second.

Connolly does have a lead in the poll. The withdrawal of Gavin complicates matters because the DKs could change from the first period with Gavin as a candidate to the second period without Gavin. How many FFers may not vote because Gavin is not the candidate? Did RedC resurvey those who had selected Gavin before he dropped out? Gavin dropping out would have had an effect on the number of DKs if they had been resurveyed and some of the transfers to Humphreys would not appear if those Gavin votes became DKs. And it is the high % of DKs that is another problem. Voters are still deciding how they will vote.

FF have won more seats than FG in the dail in the last 2 elections, just because they're having a bad time of it in the presidential election doesn't mean they are a non entity and in danger of being swallowed up…

New Red C poll. Conducted on October 2-7. Gavin withdrew on 5th

So fully doesnt reflect the withdrawal.

1st preferences

Connolly 36

Humphreys 25

Gavin 12

27% undecideds

After transfers:

Connolly 39

Humphreys 31

30% non transferable

There's another debate on RTE Radio 1 at 13:00 with David McCullagh.

There does seem to be a sense of panic among Humphreys supporters. They had relied on the early polls without FF or SF having made a decision. In those early polls, Humphreys was doing well because it was only SocDems/PBP/Lab backing Connolly. Martin screwed up in trying to impose his mini-me Gavin on FF.

Voters, other than party members, generally decide their vote in the last two weeks before an election. The problem for the simplistic analysis pushed by the media is that most of the voters are not party members. Some of those voters will show up in the DK %. The problem with the two recent RedC polls is that they had major events occurring in the sampling period which made the polls somewhat problematic. (Kelleher and Gavin as candidates in one and then Gavin dropping out in the second). RedC and Ireland Thinks use a panel based approach which is in effect a sample of a sample of the electorate. Ipsos-B&A uses face to face polling which is generally considered more accurate. To get a reasonable view of support, it would be necessary to look at the support for the candidates in the two methodologies. The Irish Times hasn't published its poll (Ipsos-B&A) yet and may do so towards the end of next week or the week after.

Connolly has what the Americans refer to as "the big mo". She has the momentum behind her camapign and the various negative stories pushed by the media (Syria, Wallace and Daly, Eirigi) have not affected it. Even that rapist smear backfired terribly on FG. The Humphreys campaign is getting increasingly desperate. It simply hasn't caught the electorate's imagination. Compared to Connolly's well thought out replies and presidential poise, there's very little that Humphreys can do to compete. It is almost as if Humphreys was the FG candidate to compete with Gavin rather than Connolly with FG having written off Connolly too early.