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IF THEY SAY a week is a long time in politics, what about 226 weeks? That’s the length of time since Ireland last voted in an election.
Over the next few days we’ll see 949 council seats filled along with 14 seats in the European Parliament. While that’s important in itself, we’ll also get a clear sense of how the Irish electorate is feeling ahead of a general election.
Something that must happen over the next nine months.
Ballots in the European elections won’t be announced until tomorrow night and counting may extend into the next few days, so we’re going to focus a little bit on what to look out for as the local election results come in.
There have been so many polls released over the past few months that it’s been hard to keep track. Between different polling companies and surveys across both elections, there’s just a lot of numbers and figures to take in.
One of the clearest trends though has been the apparent strength of independent candidates. The most recent The Journal/Ireland Thinks poll ahead of election day put independents at 23% and ahead in the race for European seats.
In local government, independents already have a strong representation, winning about one in five of all the seats up for grabs in 2019, but there will be many non-aligned candidates hoping to see this increase.
Interestingly though, the political stage has somewhat shifted in regards independents over the past while.
The emergence of Independent Ireland as a registered party has grouped a number of prominent independents under the same banner, with some candidates being in the position of being grouped with some others they may not agree with politically.
For example, Ciaran Mullooly, who is running for Independent Ireland, was forced to distance himself from comments made by party leader Michael Collins TD.
In another era, a so-called celebrity candidate like Mullooly might have thrown his lot in with one of the big parties, but such is the wind behind the sails of independents, perhaps he saw this as the best option.
In recent days we have also seen the perceived independence of non-aligned representatives being questioned by some opposition parties, with Labour and People Before Profit in particular suggesting that the voting records of many independents in the Dáil show that they often side with the government.
If indeed it is the case that independents have a good day today, expect this question to be a big one as people speculate about the mathematics of the next Dáil.
Electorally speaking, this may be the biggest question we get an answer on today.
In the previous local elections in 2019 Sinn Féin had a disastrous day. The party went from having the lion’s share of Dublin City Council (15 seats) to just 8 seats out of 63 and this pattern was matched elsewhere in the country, where it essentially lost half its representation in local councils.
It was seen as a major blow to a party that had a new leader in place in the form of Mary Lou McDonald and there were post-mortems galore afterwards.
However, suggestions that the party’s support had peaked were wildly misplaced. Nine months later Sinn Féin won the most first preferences in the general election, a historic first time ever that neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael had won the popular vote.
In the four years since Sinn Féin has become used to topping opinion polls, often by wide margins, but this has shifted in the past year, with the party now slumping back to instead fight for lead with Fine Gael.
The issue of immigration dominating the campaign clearly hasn’t helped the party, but some of the party’s own members have also said there are other issues at play.
Regardless of the reasons, there will certainly be an eagerness in the party to position itself strongly ahead of the general election. Particularly if they’re seeking to use the local elections to springboard some fresh faces towards a run at the Dáil.
In some ways the poor performance in 2019 offers a low base from which they can seek to improve, but if the improvement is only marginal this would certainly represent a concern.
The party put forward 335 candidates in the locals yesterday, it’s still fewer than Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but is way up on the 230 or so they had last time.
In some constituencies there are four Sinn Féin names on the ballot, perhaps a risky strategy in some areas, but with eyes on the general election the party is not going to make the mistake again of running too few.
When he announced his shock resignation as taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, Leo Varadkar felt he was “no longer the right person” to maximise the Fine Gael vote.
It was a rare candid admission from a political leader but came from a man who had struggled to turn his appeal into electoral success for his party.
Now, Taoiseach Simon Harris faces the first test of whether he is the “right person” his party is looking for.
The early signs have been positive, with polls suggesting Fine Gael has risen by three percentage points in the past month. This bump has even led to some suggestions that Harris would use his prerogative to call a general election sooner than the March 2025 deadline.
Asked about this last weekend, Harris again reiterated that there was “a lot of work to do” before he wished to call an election, adding that “there’s a poll taking place on Friday”.
Now that this poll has been completed, those questions are unlikely to stop if Fine Gael manages to secure some strong results.
The crowded centre-left space has become even more crowded in this election and it throws up a lot of questions about the number of votes to go around.
While there has been some focus on these elections being the first for Simon Harris as party leader, the same can be said for Holly Cairns at the Social Democrats and Ivana Bacik at Labour.
Both women are leading their parties for the first time in elections and the locals may provide some important evidence for party strategists ahead of the next general election.
In the Dáil, the Social Democrats currently hold six seats and Labour seven, a haul that owes a lot to Sinn Fein not running sufficient candidates to benefit from transfers.
It means that the two parties will be playing defence in the next general election, and in many cases may be fighting each other to hold onto those numbers.
Polling has frequently put both parties within the margin of error of one another at 4-5% but these elections also throw another factor into the mix.
The Green Wave that swept Eamon Ryan’s party into government in 2020 first started rising in the local elections in 2019.
The vote saw the party dramatically growing its presence in local government and it coincided with a period in which the global climate action movement found a new face in the form of Greta Thunberg.
Now, after four years in a coalition government in Ireland in which the Greens have been successful in getting policies over the line, they face the perennial challenge of smaller coalition partners in getting squeezed at election time.
From a support level of 7% in the last general election, the Greens are now polling at around 4% and are therefore fighting with the aforementioned Labour and SocDems.
With all three parties fighting for the same pool of votes, something may have to give.
Ireland has never elected a politician from a far-right party, with the best-performing candidate in the 2020 general election getting just 2% of first-preference votes.
Ahead of the local elections, we have seen a number of new parties that have leaned into anti-immigrant sentiment registering with the newly formed Electoral Commission.
Some of the parties whose rhetoric is heavy with such sentiment are The Irish People, the National Party, the Irish Freedom Party and Ireland First.
Candidates from those parties as well as some independents who have espoused similar views number over 110 across the country, with more than half of the local electoral areas having such a candidate.
While immigration policies have been central to the debate ahead of the local elections and have been discussed by all parties, the far-right in Ireland and elsewhere present immigration as a kind of cultural pollutant.
They claim that immigrants bring crime to the country and pose a threat to locals, especially women and children.
Such misleading rhetoric is heard at many of the anti-asylum seeker protests around the country, and many of the agitators that have attended such protests have built up significant profiles on social media.
Several are running in both the local and European elections, but the chances of being elected at local level is much higher. One of the biggest questions of these local elections is therefore whether this online support has real-word clout.
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The article highlights solid data and real experiences, i do not dispute this. However it’s apparent too that people’s lives can he turned upside down by journalists without consideration.
In 2019 I was subject to being named in international press and mistakenly. It took two years to address and I only ever received an apology after 16 months. To this very day I receive threats by email from strangers.
@Osprey: what a horrible experience for ya, people should never be allowed work in journalism again after doing that
Wonder are some “journalists” trying to prop up the upcoming Hate bill?
@Dave Barrett: Sad state of affairs that such legislation is needed.
How about an article on the persecution of Julian Assange?
@Winston Smith: That’s different apparently, because his feelings weren’t hurt by something somebody said, that he found personally offensive.
He’s also obviously not a real journalist, because he didn’t once regurgitate the press packets of government propaganda and he had some crazy conspiracy theorist idea about delivering the entire truth warts and all for people to draw their own conclusions from it, once again, that’s clearly not real journalism..
/sarcasm
Delete your Twitter account. Problem solved.
@Mr. Cullen: Our slew of ex-CIA directors in leading positions (content moderation, strategy, etc.) within Twitter, Facebook, Google et. al. strongly advise that you do not delete your twitter account.
@Mr. Cullen: It’s hilarious that people aren’t capable of handling the mass of information in front of them, it may be the most enjoyable aspect of the media, seeing how people can underpin reality with complete trash.
@Mr. Cullen: that won’t work as that’s how they research and get ideas, quotes etc. now they can use ChatGPT to write copy …. the good ones know this and get on with it without complaining
@thesaltyurchin: You find it hilarious, I find it horrifying.
Do all genders have representation among DCU’s professors and associate professors of digital media?
Journalist’s definition of “trolling”= anyone online objecting to or criticizing a piece of my writing/reporting and countering it with a different opinion or viewpoint.
Because they attract cowards, keyboard warriors is all they are
Is there any evidence that female journalists are marked out for any more aggressive criticism/hate/abuse than male ones? Should there be a different standard then i.e. female journalists should be treated better because they’re more sensitive to the criticism. Surely that wouldn’t be a very feminist point of view. Surely, there’s a difference between strong criticism and hate and abuse as there clearly is in the examples above.
@Tom D: These new legal regulations that are being recommended in the article will be for everyone irrespective of gender. I didn’t see any suggestion of having different standards. This is about digital ID
@Tom D: there has been evidence gathered time and again, the Irish times made the decision to stop comments on any article on their website written by a woman almost a decade ago after the tone of those comments regularly degenerated into personal attacks. The Guardian in the uk ran the metrics about that time for their comments and found of the 10 journalists who got the most abuse 8 were female and 2 were men of colour. Their white male colleagues never got anything like the same level of abuse. Be clear here this is talking about abuse not arguments or differences of opinion, it is personal attacks based on nothing more than the gender of the journalist. I heard The Irish Times decision directly from their online editor when he gave a talk to journalism students in 2015.
Sadly comes with the job. I worked customer support for years and the abuse colleagues would get male or female was disgusting and uncalled for from customer’s who assumed cos they spwnt money on our service, meant they could say anything, so can only imagine what journos get. Think covid has also helped bring out the anger and crazy in a lot now who think they can say what they like.
@Tom Newell: I’ve been there. People are sometimes worse over the phone. I once got a furious rant from someone who’d bought products from a completely different company & misdialled in his rage. At least when I mentioned that, he had the grace to laugh at himself savaging the wrong number in an effort to impress his boss!
Dreadful that female journalists suffer like that. The elephant in the room is that nobody (including hacks) are held accountable for their online activity and when AI grows up, it’ll get millions of times worse. On the other side some irresponsible ‘journalists’ stir the pot too – the sick frenzy around Turbity or the BBC witchhunt are too good examples. Its chaos in digital and social media. And when the Gov tries to take action, the “freedom of speech” card gets played.
@Chris Curran: We have sufficiently harvested enough data (see recent Google announcements to circumvent GDPR and transfer to US) to fool you into thinking AI is real and generate much of the content on this website (AFP) for example, in line with our overall objectives. We thank you for using our service. Terms and conditions apply.
@Chris Curran: its free content, everyone gets a break from thinking.
Why were journalists targeting men women and children who refused COVID vaccines for online abuse? Why are you deleting this comment?
Yes-but, what about, if you only…..and freedom!
All the usual suspects are here.
Because the people doing this think women are easy targets it’s a form of harassment intimidation bullying but for the the bully’s that doing this will always fall victim when they become the bullied and soon reliaze the mental stress it causes that could lead to health issues.
Sounds reasonable. Who wouldn’t want to protect women from abuse. It looks like the onus for bringing in digital ID(this can then be linked to CBDCs/health certificate/social credit score) will be shifted to companies. Pesky constitutional safeguards on free speech can be easily circumvented on the internet if AI filters off a low threshold.
“Being subject to a barrage of tweets describing you as monstrous, calculating or conniving eats away at your sense of professional and personal worth, as much as you try to tell yourself it’s not true”
“So what do we do? The journalists interviewed for the DCU research expressed a desire for social media platforms to take a pro-active, rather than reactive, approach to online abuse. Instead of having moderators – some of whom are volunteers or AI – responding to flagged tweets and deciding whether they should be taken down, users could simply be prohibited from publishing tweets containing certain words or phrases.
“Bolstering the law around social media platforms’ positions as publishers of content would make it easier to take legal action for defamation. As the report points out, this could force the platforms to clean up their act, “because they’re about money”
So will the AI be filtering comments that accuse someone of being “calculating or
conniving” or other subjective personal opinions? Bit of a slippery slope
@Sean: No more slagging Bertie, lads. The AI will be filtering it because Bertie might sue if you call him “the most cunning” according to the recommendation in this article
Twitter has really taken a dive since musk took it over. People that were banned all back and very little oversight now.
@James King: Our various directors have been parachuted from CIA and Pentagon to director positions within the organisation. Everything is under control. It is for your greater good.
@Corporate Interests: And Fossetts are hiring, you should send a CV.
“I always struggled to understand why apparently ordinary people engage in such hateful, abusive rhetoric online.”
It’s not difficult to understand at all. All people need to do is read random comments from any online forum or social media and it will be very easy to see that a lot of commenters are a bit thick, their bark is bigger than their bite, most of the time they would not say things to you face. It’s far more apparent these days as the internet allows for all sorts of yobos to have their say, but it’s certainly not a new thing. The nature of the job probably makes it an easier target. Male journos also get abused, but as males do, they usually just suck it up and not report it, which is not always the best way.
My comment on this article was deleted and so were others, mainly I assume because they were somewhat critical, but not offensive. I guess you either toe the line or get deleted, I’ll be banned after this watch. Pure nonsense and you guys think you’re paragons of virtue.
A lot of weak cowards out there, with tinfoil hats and living in their moms attic!
@Emmet Murphy:
“Mom” is such an Americanism. It’s Ma!
@Sean: In fairness, and I say this as a Dub who has always slagged people who say anything other than Mam, I’ve been told since by pals in Cork and Kerry that a lot of people in Munster call their Mam ‘Mom’ from the pronunciation of the Irish word.
D4s who say Mom need to give it a rest though
@Sean: Ma is such a Dublinism, it’s Mother. :)
The term “sex” should be used when referring to biological characteristics, while “gender” should be reserved for social and cultural differences.
If journalists are getting repeatedly harassed by the same people, the law should already protect them. Sounds like the process is not being followed or taken seriously.
If this hate speech bill was really trying to deal with harmful discrimination, it would include class – the single most widespread form of discrimination anywhere in the world. It doesn’t because the people bringing in the new law are all from the same segment of society and just want to protect themselves – not anyone else further down the social hierarchy, whatever they claim. The hate speech bill will be used overwhelmingly by middle class people to go after working-class people.
My original comment from 12 hours ago removed because it got 600 upvote. The journal censors comments that don’t break guidelines
@ Megan Ward
Mammy is a classic. Mam also.
Interesting about the west. I can hear my cousins saying mom now that you raise that
Noel Gallagher-if i had a boom boom stick lyrics, i’d shoot a hole into the sun.. Hope ye get the idea
It’s generally the same scared cowards and children who sound off on here all the time about immigrants, LGBTQ issues and anything climate related.
They’re just angry and scared that someone is going to take things from them and a lot of them are to unintelligent to understand that they are being played.
I feel sorry for them really.
@Schrodingers Immigrant: The “I feel sorry for them really” comment is a passive aggressive response and that kind of psychological manipulation should be discouraged as much as physical violence is in men. It’s the kind of passive aggressive comment which makes people angrier because it is difficult to argue with directly. Your own arguments aren’t very intelligent either (no basis) even if you do think you’re morally superior.
If people are reluctant to allow an influx of immigrants then maybe it is because of a fear of losing something and that’s not irrational. It should be discussed openly not ignorantly dismissed. You won’t win anyone over to your opinions that way.
Because the people who do this are cowards.
have your say