Presidential Election 2025

Correct ,I’m even considering giving her the nod as a nice lady president and academic and many like me who wouldn’t vote for SF in a million years because we can see through them

SF think a majority of voters don’t know that they’re a populist party with populist unaffordable all things to all men policies mainly to try get Belfast in charge of things

They’re hardly worth worrying about for 2 main reasons,they can’t **** up the finances because the EU won’t let them and secondly,they haven’t shown the cop on or ability to build bridges with one of the other main parties and news flash shinners,CC being supported by people who should support her isn’t a bridge ,it’s just SF(and they took their time) lending her their support

That’s not a roar of an àss from a GE voter party consensus

But I can see the rub a dub dub between the usual suspects here,lucky I’m around to add a sense of reality

Ye are welcome

The current poll is reflective of what's being seen in current terms. A botched presidential election bid from FF with MM having to carry the can for that. A not overly popular budget as well, not a sign of a big ground swell away from the govt, just the usual retraction you'd expect at the time of the poll.

HH has a chance of winning under the defence of “honest opinion”. Especially when the judges final determination in the previous case was that Burton was not “totally restricted” so it was not imprisonment in the legal sense. However, Humphreys could justifiability argue in the lay persons sense Burton was “locked in” metaphorically and physically, given the emotional context of a situation.

To be honest I would find a potential Murphy v Humphreys defamation case far more intriguing, than this Presidential race.

It's a sideshow now. the damage (proving the Ivan yates theory) has been done.
There are not many votes to be gained by appealing to those who think little of Murphy, I doubt many of them were voting for Connolly anyway.

Opinion polls are surveys of public opinion at specific times. They are dependent on current events and the biggest in the last few weeks has been Gavin dropping out and the perception that Martin is to blame for the whole fiasco. The drop in his approval rating (-11%) is an indication that the electorate blames him for the fiasco. The -5% FF change may also be due to FF not having a candidate in an election that it should have won with an FG candidate as weak as Humphreys.

There are also two polls. The presidential and the party polls are connected. The effects of the decisions by Martin and Harris are spreading into the party poll.

That is just sour grapes talk.

We all know that anything could have come out about these people and that they would have the challenge that faces Humphreys - connection to the government and not fitting the mould of what the people seem to want in a President here.

However is advising HH on her campaign is totally ruining it for her

I only heard yesterday that she compared CC to Nigel Farage..

Harry Burtons cartoon in the Examiner sums up the campaign nicely.

Sorry .. I can't seem to link it properly from X...

Kelleher is a proven vote getter and got elected to the European Parliament in Ireland South. He also got 29 votes to Gavin's 41 votes in the FF selection contest, He is a politician and would have been much better than Gavin.

I was supporting CC from her announcement that she was running.

Wikipedia lists FG's political position as centre Right. It lists FF's position as centre/centre Right.

Probably because you knew SF weren’t going to run

We seem to be running a post-mortem here. Hopefully it's not premature.

Apart from the parties who initially supported her (PBP and SD and some left-leaning independents) nobody can really take any satisfaction from their strategies in the Presidential Election.

Fianna Fail are probably the worst hit - they had a pretty unappealing set of candidates to choose from and they finally plumped for Gavin, failing to check his past in their process. Would the others have been better? we'll never know. With Gavin's withdrawal the government parties were left without a sweeper, or an alternative should FGs campaign run into a scandal. And that's exactly what has happened - the voters have turned away from Humphries - if the FF candidate was still there then the disaffected Government voters would have had an alternative from 'their' side of the political fence to keep the votes alive.

Fine Gael's choice of McGuinness seemed inspired and to have a good chance of succeeding. Her early withdrawal was unfortunate but understandable. The choice of Humphries looked like the best of a bad lot but it seemed to gather the FG faithful suggesting that Connolly's task would be difficult since she would now be facing the combined votes of the two government parties (see above though!). The handling of her campaign has been an unmitigated disaster - she's looked incompetent, petty, vindictive - anything but presidential. In a race like this where you are losing, losing with dignity is important - and that's just not happening. FG are still in the race which is better than FF - but not much.

Sinn Fein went down the FF route of dithering over the choice of candidate citing their need to complete their interal decision making process. They have the talent within their party to choose a decent candidate - I don't think it needed to be a headline star - a good strategy can make someone a star (cf Connolly). They also had an important role to play to ensure that the left vote coalesced around a candidate and , in the event of an upset, an alternative. This is very similar to the situation that Gavin's withdrawal caused the FF/FG axis. SF elected to back Connolly rather than put up their own candidate - they are lucky that Gavin pulled out - if he hadn't then their inaction would have put Connolly in serious danger. I honestly don't understand SFs thinking in this process - it seems to be yet another example of a failure of SF strategy caused by muddled internal processes. Even if their candidate had fewer votes than Connolly they would still be more instrumental in electing her than by just backing her.

Labour took the same route as SF, were late to the party, but were at least decisive about it once they had completed their internal process. They also had less choice than SF, being smaller. If SF claim that their actions elected Connolly then Labour can claim the same and will no doubt crow over having had a major role in electing 4 Irish Presidents who served 4 and two half terms (2 embarrassing bits) between them. I'm including Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh in this as Labour were part of the government that nominated him.

The right (Aontu and the right leaning independents) failed to get their act together in time. I don't buy this spiel that 'the state' prevented them from nominating a candidate - when you look at the likes of Casey, Gallagher, Duffy, Freeman, Davis, Norris - who all managed to get nominated - you realise that it's just about organisation. Money helps as well and don't tell me that the right can't raise money. Aontu should have led this charge - they didn't.

The Greens - I think they're supporting Connolly but don't know for sure. They've got more problems of their own to deal with at the moment.

They have that in common with the Shinners I guess.