Are Sinn Féin Voters Well Served By Green TDs?

Green Party leader Trevor Sargent last weekend described Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats as a disgrace to the men and women of 1916 and the principles they fought for. The current Labour Party constituency newsletter reports that 15% of children in Ireland live in consistent poverty.

I believe the ideological divide in Irish politics is between the paternalistic, bureaucratic and trap-laden dependancy culture of Fine Gael and Labour, and the redistribution, enabling and strategically targetted special supports associated with the Fianna Fáil-led coalition and its full employment economic philosophy.

When working class people give a transfer vote to the Greens, I wonder are they voting for the paternalistic charity approach of Fine Gael and Labour or the prosperity and self-reliance that the present government is working towards. The largest tranche of Sinn Féin votes tend to transfer to the Green Party — between 20 and 30% is normal. But are Sinn Féin voters who give their second preference votes to the Greens being hoodwinked?

Last weekends national poll gave the Greens 7% support nationally. In the 2002 General Election the Greens got 3.85% of the national vote and 3.61% of Dáil seats. Sinn Féin in contrast got 6.51% of the national vote in 2002, but only 3.01% of Dáil seats.

A general election contender would normally need to get the equivalent of half a quota of first preference votes to be able to make the full quota and get elected on surplus votes and transfers. In a four-seater constituency that would mean Greens need 10% of first preferences. A Green candidate would need over 8% at the first count to have a chance in one of the twelve five-seaters.

Current Green and Progressive Democrat seats are concentrated in just a few suburban areas. The Greens would say Mary White in Carlow Kilkenny has a realistic chance of winning a Dáil seat in 2007, but she only had 40% of a quota in 2002. Paul Gogarty must have felt he could walk on water when he won in the Dublin Mid-West three-seater after being marginally below half a quota at the first count. Dan Boyle in Cork South-Central on over half a quota in a five-seater holds the only Green seat outside suburban Dublin, and that’s in suburban Cork. Deirdre De Burca has a good level of support in the northern part of the Wicklow constituency, but hasn’t a chance of picking up enough votes beyond the Pale.

To have broad electability the Green Party would need to be polling above 10% nationally. That seems an unlikely goal to reach from their long-term opinion poll position around the 4 - 5% mark. The Greens shouldn’t take too much heart from their increased poll showing last weekend because come election day, as Neil Kinnock kept finding in UK Labour, too many voters hands hover over the Green candidate’s name before settling to vote for one of the ‘main’ parties. Even in the 2004 locals, polls were putting the Greens on 8 or 9% a few weeks before June 11th, but on the day they only got about 4.5%, which incidentally Red C accurately predicted for the Sunday Business Post in their final poll before the 2004 elections.

Many Green TD’s then got into the Dáil in 2002 as a direct result of Sinn Féin vote transfers. Unfortunately for Sinn Féin, Green Party votes are nowhere near as effective at transfering to Sinn Féin. In Dublin South-Central in the 2002 election less than 12% of Green votes transferred to Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh, while in Dublin South-West Seán Crowe topped the poll and was elected without Green transfers.

Whether the Greens are more like Labour or closer to Fianna Fáil’s brand of socialism, they undoubtedly form part of a pretty big broad left block on the Opposition benches in Leinster House, along with Independents, Joe Higgins and Sinn Féin.

In 2002 it was 42 different elections , and it’ll be 43 next time out as an additional constituency has been created. Whatever the precise outcome will be in 2007 I think Pat Rabbitte came close to making sense when he spoke in Wexford recently of Fine Gael losing its position as the second biggest party in the Dáil and in Irish political life. When and how that happens may become clearer in the weeks after the next General Election.

One final point of interest from the 2004 local election statistics, and one that all the parties should work to address. Almost 2% of all votes cast were declared invalid — that’s almost 37,000 votes that could have changed the result for some losing contenders. Most invalid votes were not due to deliberate spoiling but from voters not knowing how to fill out the ballot paper correctly.

Who was it who said ‘Education. Education. Education.’?

Neil Kinnock’s successor (after John Smith, that is), Tony Blair.