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Crunching the numbers on Greens and NAMA
Read more about: Coalition, Comment, Green Party, Ireland, NAMA 
Warning 1: I am about to attempt mathematics. I am a journalist.
Warning 2: I am about attempt electoral mathematics. I am a journalist.
Warning 3: I know you can’t reduce voting preferences to maths, so don’t bring that up. Yes this is speculation for the sake of discussion. I am a journalist.
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I have been in contact with the Green Party Press Office. Here’s the low down…
Valid motions on NAMA have come from four Green Party branches, these are Dublin South Central, Dublin Central, Kerry North and Waterford. Motions from Dublin South West and Mayo West were also tabled but proved invalid, they were either not placed on the agenda or tabled too late. Thus, in total six branches have tabled NAMA-sceptic motions, but four have been accepted.
Five branches are required to table a motion to force a special party convention. Thus, it seems a special convention is not “likely” but inevitable.
The total number of members in the four which are officially NAMA-sceptic is 170. However, it would be unfair to assume that every member of those branches would vote against supporting NAMA. Let’s, for arguments’ sake, take it that 60% this group will vote against the proposed legislation – 102 votes. Then, let’s knock another 35% off that figure for the members who will won’t show up to cast their ballot – we’re then down to 66 votes.
I couldn’t get the official numbers on members in Mayo West or Dublin South West but am told that they are fairly weak areas of Green Party activity – a maximum number of 50 was mentioned by a Green member. Again, let’s take 60% of them as NAMA-sceptic and drop 35% – that’s 20 votes.
So, currently there’s a specualtive number of 86 anti-NAMA votes from a section of Green Party membership that had 220 voters – of which I’m taking 143 to be active voters.
This would likely be unrepresentative of the rest of the Green grassroots – all branches didn’t table a NAMA-sceptic motion – but it is worth taking the maths one step further.
Approximately 400 members voted at the recent Green special convention on Lisbon II. Of that number 170 (220 minus 35%), under my dodgey calculations, would have been from one of the six overtly NAMA-sceptic branches. This seems disproportionate but as far as I’m aware the Dublin branches are on average far larger than the non-Dublin branches, and three of the overtly NAMA-sceptic branches are in Dublin, so it makes sense (to me, anyway).
So that leaves 230 members from other non-NAMA-sceptic or covertly, thus far, NAMA-scepetic branches who are active voters. Considering that these members are part of a generally non-NAMA-sceptic group and that the majority of remaining Greens have followed the leadership’s line since entering Government, I’m going to take 20% of these as potential anti-NAMA voters. That’s 44 votes.
So, 44 plus 86 gives a total of 130 anti NAMA-support votes from a figure of 400. That verges on the 1/3 needed to defeat the 2/3rd majority required for an internal Green vote to pass.
But, as I said, you can’t reduce a vote to maths – but you can try.
My own non-mathematical politics-junkie-looking-for-a-fix take on it…
The grassroots won’t pull to legs from under the leadership with the renegoiation of the programme for Government on the horizon. The leadership know this and will make certain promises. The NAMA vote will get a 2/3rd majority and it’ll come down to the programme for Gov’t.
What do you lot make of it?
I think the Greens (the grassroots) know the game is up for the current government and they view the long term interests of the party to be paramount over NAMA or the careers of their TDs. They will seek and I believe have a good chance of succeeding in sling shooting the party out of government in advance of the budget. The budget cannot pass as it will require too many riders from the FF back benches.
A couple of thoughts:
1) Learning from last month’s Special Convention on Lisbon II, I would imagine that if a special convention on NAMA is held, the smart money would be on the leadership angling for a motion to be phrased in such a way as to require a 2/3 majority vote in order to mandate the TDs to reject NAMA, rather than requiring a 2/3 majority in order to mandate support for it, assuming the leadership don’t want to use this as their get-out-of-jail-free card (god knows they’ve turned down enough opportunities to use one thus far). It all depends on who gets their motions in first and how they are phrased, but the leadership are unlikely to want to have as close a vote as the Lisbon II one, which passed by exactly a 2/3 majority, a single vote could have seen it defeated.
2) This all assumes that a special meeting is actually held, for already in Dublin South Central there is a move afoot by some members to hold a new vote on withdrawing the consistency group’s support for the motion to hold a special NAMA meeting that the branch itself instigated. I doubt this second vote will be successful, if it even procedurally is allowed, but it goes to show that just because a constituency group proposes something it doesn’t hold that the all their members, even a majority of their members, will support that motion at a national convention, just that a majority of the members that voted on the day supported the motion.
History is written by those who show up, something especially true at Green meetings.
My 2-bits – gazing through my crystal ball I foresee a special convention happening, nothing very exciting coming out of it, and it all being a bit moot thanks to the Supreme Court.
I didn’t see any of the “grassroots” get too exercised about their parliamentary party blithely adopting Dermot Ahern’s assault on democratic principles, or John Gormley’s pathetic “Dick Roche was so powerful he could impose a ministerial order no force in the world could defeat” u-turn on Tara, so I don’t share the conviction that there is any sort of principle or ethos at work among the Green Party membership. I don’t know what they think their party is or what it’s for, so no result on anything would surprise me coming from this shower.
I think ben has it to rights even if I disagree that there are no principles at work. If they didn’t resile at the points he indicates why on earth would they at NAMA, something they’re hugely unsuited to analyse in terms of their lack of a clear economic policy platform. My only point of disagreement with ben is that they have principles alright, but arguably the wrong ones that are diverting them from appreciating what’s happening beyond their comfort zone of climate change et al.
I think one of the more interesting aspects of these motions is that they have been tabled by Dublin Central and Dublin South Central. The three local election candidates in these areas (Gary Fitzgerald in Cabra Glasnevin, David Geary in North Inner City and Martin Hogan in SWIC) would be fairly close to the leadership and John Gormley in particular. Now obviously the fact that motions came from these constituencies doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of those individuals but I think its interesting all the same