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THE POLLS FOR the same-sex marriage referendum have been showing in favour of the Yes side.
A poll taken last month showed 67% of people in favour of a Yes vote, with 21% against and 12% undecided.
However, as previous referendums have shown us, voting patterns can shift dramatically as the Referendum date approaches.
Divorce referendum
The Divorce Referendum of 1995 is often cited as an example when talking about the big difference between what people say to pollsters and how they vote once they are in the privacy of the polling booth.
Alan Kinsella / TwitterPolling patterns in the run up to the 1995 Divorce Referendum #marref pic.twitter.com/BcZxh3oZry
— Alan Kinsella (@electionlit) May 9, 2015
The level of support for the the Yes side narrowed dramatically in the run up to the referendum.
In May of 1995, six month before the actual vote, more than 70% of those asked said they would be voting in favour of the amendment.
As time went on, this narrowed dramatically, with support for the amendment becoming marginal in the weeks before the vote.
On the day, the referendum passed by the narrowest of margins, with a majority of less than 10,000 votes, out of a total of 1,633,942 votes counted.
Seanad referendum
The Seanad referendum was another example of polling information before the election failing to represent the way things actually turned out.
Almost all of the polls taken in the run up to the vote showed respondents in favour of abolishing the upper chamber outnumbering those in favour of keeping it. However, also included in the polling data were are large number of undecided voters.
In November 2012, polls showed a majority in favour of the abolition, with an Ipsos MRBI poll in the Irish Times showing 55% support.
By September of 2013, things were still looking positive for the side in favour of abolition, with 44% for to 27% against and 29% undecided.
In the end, undecided voters proved decisive, with polling day seeing a swing away from what had been forecast in the polls.
The referendum was rejected on 4 October 2013 by the electorate with 51.7% voting against it and 48.3% voting in favour of it.
Children’s referendum
The Children’s Referendum, which changed the constitutional outline of the way the State can engage with children’s rights and the ability of the State to take protective measures over children.
A poll taken three weeks prior to the vote showed 74% in favour of passing the amendment, although with voters expressing concern that not all the relevant issues were clear.
This referendum passed on 10 November 2012 with 58% of voters in favour of the changes. The vote had one of the lowest turnouts of any referendum in the history of the State, with only 33.5% of the electorate voting.
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Am not educated on this matter but can Irish labs not do this work , ??? I do want a vaccine found can we not do it here and even crate more lab jobs in the process ?? And if we did find one in Ireland , knowing our people we would give it to the whole world for free , cuz we’re Irish that’s why
@Karllye kripton:
I’m not looking forward to the final bill at the end of all this!
@Karllye kripton: Your misuse of punctuation makes it difficult to respond to what you’re trying to ask. Is the first section three questions? (, ???)
@Sylvia O’Regan: we be grand sure long as we’re still alive , mite have to cut back on a few luxuries but we’ll work through it
@JC: take a nap JC
@Karllye kripton: the development, production and distribution of a vaccine will cost billions, way beyond the capabilities of a small or medium sized nation.
@Derdaly: the production would cost that but I mean give the ingredients to other countries so they could make it themselves
@Karllye kripton: Everyone is doing all they can mate, ireland too
@Karllye kripton: whatever vaccine emerges will be produced in the billions of doses. Traditional vaccines are grown in a lab. Wherever production is based it will be producing large volumes, setting up an environment just for little old Ireland is unlikely to be economical. However as Trump pointed out last night, this is as good a place to manufacture as anywhere else given the large amount of Bio Pharma already here.
@Karllye kripton: better for countries to pool their resources and have a better chance of finding the vaccine.
@Karllye kripton: no one in this country should be dealing with classist access to life saving and life prolonging medication treatments at the whim of some legislation or an ongoing game of pass the parcel mr kripton.. Especially since a lot are owned by US pharmaceutical corporations and pay near to no tax on the funnelled profits perhaps.. Ask Donald duck
Why are we paying for this
@Maurice O Neill: you think we shouldn’t pay our share?? Your hero is putting hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars into a company that has never developed a vaccine. Any views on that?
@Maurice O Neill: makes leo look good on the world stage which is of the ulimate importance….
@Peter donnelly: Will you refuse the resulting vaccine to stop Leo getting credit?
@Maurice O Neill: Because your precious president trump is a selfish clueless a$$.
€78million so far.. What are other countries contributing? For such a small country will we be once again paying way over our fair share? Don’t get me wrong we need a cure/vaccine but proportion must be considered here.
@Lydia McLoughlin: small but wealthy country, by comparison with most of the worlds nations.
Top ten GDP per capita globally for last decade at roughly $85k per man, woman and child……
@ℝ: sadly 85k though not true. Wealth over a few but debt spread over many to save the few
@ℝ: I’ll be interested to know how much Germany are giving as last I heard they didn’t want to take on debt and burden their people.. Unlike the Irish govt who are more than willing to throw us under the bus very quickly
@Lydia McLoughlin: 78m is a pittance.
@Lydia McLoughlin: Looking at this lockdown (a word from the American prison system, I might add), the word “proportion” isn’t in the government’s vocabulary.
@Paul Whitehead: perhaps but we’re not exactly in the black!!
@Lydia McLoughlin: Germany has contributed €525 million to the fight for a vaccine. The EU Commission also committed a further €1 billion on behalf of the European Union in its entirety.
@Bernard Cantillon: Norway, which is about the same size as us population wise, has also contributed €1 billion to the vaccine fight. Ireland is a very wealthy country, even if you exclude the US corporations monies channelled through here. We can probably afford much more.
I am genuinely surprised at the amount of anti science, anti-vaxxer, extreme conspiracists on line. There is a reason flat Earther’s are in league with them all. Your Luddite ways will cause deaths as we struggle to gain herd immunity through a vaccination program when it arrives.
@Simon Power: I’m surprised you’re surprised. The internet is where they live!
@Simon Power: They’re numbers are alot less than it seems thankfully. The multiple account and bot phenomenon makes em look more numerous than they actually are.
@Bilbo Baggins: says Bilbo Baggins with a fake photo and fake Twitter account. Good point
@Sylvia O’Regan: did you have use of the internet to make that comment?
@Simon Power:
anti science, anti-vaxxer, extreme conspiracists, So that’s a large group of people that you think you know more than they do.By the way i’m none of the above, but would advocate safety.
@there’s a slow train coming: Of course. How else would I comment online?
@Simon Power: I think most are attention seekers….!
@Simon Power: You forgot the idiots that storm government buildings waving confederate flags and brandishing high powered weapons.
@Simon Power: What about medical experts that are not interested in conspiracy theories, support vaccination in general but don’t think that a vaccination for covid19 make any sense? What label are going to put on those people to discredit them?
@Simon Power: how can you compare flat earthers to anti-vaxxers?
@Sylvia O’Regan: they don’t live
They barely exist
@mar: trumpets
@mar: how many do you know
He grate at giving away other people’s money
@John Errity: I grate at bad spelling and grammar.
@Morning Gus: Seriously have u nothing else to say like ‘be kind’
Have u heard of dyslexia, sometimes just sometimes some people actually have no common sense nevermind good grammer
We need to start gearing towards domestic production of a vaccine if it comes through. It’ll be up to every country to look after themselves.
@Watchful Axe: Did you type that out on a Guaranteed Irish phone?
@Watchful Axe: What if it takes a considerable amount of time for a vaccine to be found? What about the multinational corporations that have the capacity to test but don’t because it’s not profitable? Which country should they chose “to look after themselves”?
@KilkennyProud: I’d say sufficiently high quality vaccines can be created here just as well as any other country. Mind you they’ll probably prioritise who gets the vaccine based on risk and then the vast majority will just have to suck it up and take the full virus.
I’d say part of that 18m will go to help poorer countries fight the virus, only way to get rid of it is to eliminate it world wide, and I know people will argue, but we are one of the richer countries in the world, and the onus is on us to h ere lo the poorer nations.
@Karl Mc Cauley: Are we one of the richer countries? The national debt was €215billion at the start of this year, and the economy has been plunged in recession. I can’t find the info for how this has changed the debt figure, but this €18million is borrowed from the future.
The sooner people realise there will be no vaccine with an effectiveness of greater than 30% the better. Should be plowing money into repurposing anti viral treatments
@Mark: Do you have any actual evidence to back a percentage like that up or did it just come to you in a dream? Dr Holohan should be watching his seat, it seems we have a new Chief Medical Officer who also boasts the ability to see into the future.
@Mark: thanks for that doctor Mark.
Let me guess you got your training from YouTube conspiracy compilations
@Nathan Henry: go and do a bit of research on flu vaccine effectiveness, 1st generation new vaccines effectiveness, plus the likes of dengue fever, HIV and SARS which have no vaccine. If there is a vaccine and it’s a big if, the first generation will be approx 30% effective. I think Gemma O Doherty should be watching her seat with you around.
@John Ward: no, from studying vaccine development actually.
@Nathan Henry: the who said this tho. So whats the point of a vaccine then??? https://www.rte.ie/amp/1132298/
@John Ward:
Better than youtube, he read it on whatsapp!
@Mark: thanks Dr Mark. Your work in virology is a textbook masterpiece.
It’s nice to see a caretaker gov spending Millions with no Authority
@pat seery:
Yeah its great because its the right and best thing to do. Only a buffoon thinks we shouldn’t be spending money to support the country in this difficult time.
@Doug: we don’t have money to spend. We’ve shut down the economy. I’d love to know where he’s getting €18m, he hasn’t money to house people last year.
@Kath Noonan: 18 million is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Did we not give 10 million a couple of weeks ago?
Shutup, Maurice.
@Richie Cosgrove: Only asking
Another €18m down the tubes. He’s a great lad Leo, throwing millions like cents, while our economy is on the floor. €18m gone to some lads bank account in the Caymans for all we know.
@Kath Noonan: would you rather we didn’t develop a vaccine?
I’m not being funny here I understand that he is the caretaker Taoiseach but does he really have a right or authority to promise those funds when he is not part of our formed a new government? I think in crisis he should make executive action fine it’s a crisis and that’s acceptable. However, making long-term commitments when he may not be Taoiseach seems out of order. Funding anything is the purview of the next government.
Couldn’t this be put into our own research and development rather than a big American pharma giant .
Pfizer are gonna make billions…..
So when do they announce the austerity measures to fund their generosity? Sure as fcuk they’re not taking a paycut/freeze or anything like it!!!
How much does Bill Gates make in a day?
$4 billion in a single year. That averages out to approximately $10,959,000 a day, which is also about $456,625 per hour, $7,610 per minute, and $127 per second. We all want a cure but the imbalance of wealth in this world where some people not just Bill Gates have a higher GDP then some countries in the World
Bill Gates is worth 104.3 billion USD today 4.5.2020 and we give 15 Million…Sorry but I are we always the soft touch here in current and past Governments to give away money to everyone else and how has he the power Varakar to do so?
My Taoiseach
It could be like the last virus, a big pharma company poured billions into a vaccine,that was not needed.viruses have a way of mutating making the vaccines worthless.hope it don’t happen
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