Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

The results are in. Lisbon 2 has been passed by Ireland. Voting results are available here, from RTE, and the IT. I’ve added a couple of visualisations using dot plots to help show where it all changed from last year. Larger versions are available below the fold and on flickr. A larger version of the [...]

A new booklet, “Your Guide to the Lisbon Referendum“, distributed by the European Commission (website) has caused a bit of a stir. It was distributed today within a number of the national Sunday papers. Patricia McKenna, chairwomen of the People’s Movement has said that including the book may have been a breach of Irish law [...]

Well, its almost all done barring the actual voting. This point of any campaign always makes me think about the question of opinion polls and how they will compared to the actual result. Here are the MRBI and Red C polls in the run up to the referendum. So what result will next Friday’s vote [...]

The first analysis from 1990 to the 2009 (tallies only) of the local election results in Limerick City with special thanks to John Browne and FiannaFuddy (politics.ie).

It’s that time again with the European election nominations just closed that you might actually be interested in what your MEP has been up to for the last term. Want to check how they voted or how often they were in Brussel ? Thanks to http://votewatch.eu you can.

Germany has gone back to the paper ballot today with a decision by the German Federal Constitutional Court to immediately cease the use of electronic voting machines, in particular the Nedap ESD1 and ESD2. The Court said its decision was based on the evidence that the current technology had defects and was difficult to control. The devices were felt to contradict the principle of public elections with vote transparency as their defects make it possible to lose secrecy and control over the counting of the votes.

Where is the radical reform in the civil service ? Sunday Times figures show that almost every civil servant in the country has received a pay increase. The Government seemed happy to let the civil servants write the budget and now we find that the oversight process for employees in the civil service, the Performance [...]

Well the story of the US campaign season, how a cartoon managed to raise $95,000 in days for a new aspiring politician, Sean Tevis in Kansas. If you’ve ever read XKCD read on. (Wikipedia entry for XKCD)

There was a lively atmosphere on O’Connell Street in Limerick today with a red army again packing the street. Today rather than rugby, it was the issue of Shannon and its slots that were the main event. The press are pulling their punches at the moment but the only FF TD, John Creegan, on the [...]

USI is reeling from a massive internal coup this afternoon as both plotter and president have fallen on their swords. A letter from earlier this week addressed to the President and listing a litany of failures, sparked some furious debate on politics.ie which has been followed up by confirmation from David Cochrane, editor of P.ie [...]

A visible blue tide has moved Fine Gael back to 1997 levels.

There is a surprise in Dublin North-East as Terence Flanagan shades Martin Brady to join Michael Woods and Tommy Broughan in the Dail on SF transfers from Larry O’Toole.

Clare tally – missing 1700 votes. See full details.

The scandal from Limerick East is that Kieran O’Donnell is looking strong to take O’Malley’s seat and even potentially pip Peter Power for the fourth (2 boxes missing or lost from the tally). Limerick West is looking set for a repeat performance with both Dan Neville and Michael Finucane only 350 votes apart after the [...]

Looks like this is a first but it seems that tomorrow’s IMS poll will show the Alliance for Change, i.e. FG/Lab on 39% putting it just ahead of the current Government, i.e. FF/PD on 38%. It’s a first as this is the first time that all the major polling companies have FG/Lab outpolling the current [...]

Since the Nixon and Kennedy series of Great Debates, politics and television have become a critical medium for campaigns. Nixon was twenty pounds underweight with a sickly pallor, dressed in a ill-fitting shirt, and he refused makeup to improve his color and lighten his perpetual five o’clock shadow for the television debate, needless to say, [...]