Cast your vote in the 2016 General Election
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2016 12:10 pm
I've given everyone the option of 3 votes, given that it's a 3 seater.
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Voting is on Friday. I'll wait until the real pollBord na Mona man wrote:The 3rd and final seat is in the balance. Whoever loses will demand a recount!
Yeah, you can only see your own choice.first_touch wrote:Is this a secret ballot
Clearly those renegade votes from North Tipperary have distorted the democratic will of true Offaly people!!Bord na Mona man wrote:The people of uibhfhaili.com said Leahy, Cowen and Foley.
The people of Offaly and North Tipp said Cowen, Corcorcan-Kennedy and Nolan.
The North Offaly thing is interesting to me, since it is going on for some time now. What amazes me about it is that a pattern has developed that makes it impossible to conceive of TD being returned from that area as long as people continue to vote the way they do. At the risk of being seen to be contrary, the blame for this outcome lies squarely at the feet of the electorate in that area, for several reasons.ah lethimoutwithit wrote:On a serious note on this what are the thoughts that no TD elected from North Offaly. Our brethren in the South have clearly said enough is enough over the whole electing to play hurling in OCP.
Negotiations went on long into the early hours to convince the North Tippers that they had indeed more in common with the Biffs in the South than those brigands in the North of the Faithful?
Thus we booked all sorts of trends and elected 2 fine filly's!! And MCK.....
Anyway..disappointed to see John Leahy lose out, reckon Nolan happened to be the right place at the right time, (Kileavy or Reilly from Daingean could have had a good chance had the gender quota shite not scuppered their chances).
In the biggest backlash against an unpopular government of all time, huge numbers of Offaly voters in the greater Portarlington and Edenderry areas voted for John Moloney (FF), Eddie Fitzpatrick and John Foley (Both Ind, FF gene pool) when giving Quinn just 1,500 more votes would have seen him get ahead of Marcella Corcoran Kennedy on the first count - and thus more than likely into the Dáil. I'm not making any statement here on whether or not Quinn would have been a better or worse TD than MCK, but this was very definitely a case where North Offaly people had the choice of retain their traditional allegiance to the green side of the civil war, or to side with a young candidate who was going to be in the government party, and they chose the former.Liam Quinn on the other hand should get over the line. Dyed in the wool FG transfers from Flanagan will probably go to him, and if the people of North Offaly who have been hammered with increased fuel costs, negative equity and unemployment more than most, don't turn to an opposition candidate from their heartland, then you'd really have to wonder at the psychology of it all. Seriously, they've sided with FF for the last couple of elections and it has got them nowhere, now surely they will look at this election as a chance to get represented again.
This is exactly the attitude that means that North Offaly will not win a seat for a long time in my mind. I certainly don't blame voters for following party lines rather than geographical ones, but we've had a quarter of a century of proof that voting for FF running mates won't do the job - and yet every election, we get a "I'll do the same thing, but this time the outcome will be different!" attitude from the electorate up there.club125 wrote: I would suggest there is a seat for FF or SF in the North of the County. An Independent will not get the votes required from outside the Municipal District.
From casual observation it seems the new members of the community (e.g. migrants from Dublin etc.) have not fully integrated in large numbers and it seems are not participating in the electoral process.(1) Turnout in that area continues to be far below the rest of the county. For whatever reason, people don't bother voting in the same numbers down there. I'm trying to find the full details of the election (broken down by polling station) online, and I haven't managed yet - however I have seen some news outlets reporting turnout as low as 30% in some parts of Edenderry. That's obviously a huge factor.
Correct, very discernible voters up here. The lack of a successful candidate is directly proportional to the quality of the candidates put forward.(3) Here's the real issue however - since Ger Connolly lost out in the race for the 1992 election, the FF ticket in Offaly has been the same - B Cowen, + AN Other. Leaving aside the fact that there were some disastrous AN Others in that time, with one obvious example leaping off the page, North Offaly people have continually weighed in behind that candidate regardless. And since Offaly doesn't have two FF quotas in it, it means that B Cowen gets elected and the other misses out, every time. After all, if the same Killally couldn't get in behind Brian Cowen in 2007, there's just no hope for anyone.
Lone Shark wrote:Similarly now, there was no way that FF were going to win two seats with 36% of the vote, so for all Ivan Yates' prognosticating in favour of it on Newstalk, Fitzpatrick was never in with any real chance.
Theoretically yes, however I don't think you could plan for the future based on this. First of all, Barry Cowen went 1300 votes over quota, and 900 of his surplus went to Eddie Fitzpatrick - a remarkable transfer rate. So there weren't a lot of votes "wasted" on Cowen, if any at all, from a FF perspective. You still have to get your first man over the line as well, and I've no doubt that a lot of Foley's transfers that eventually went to Fitzpatrick, only did so because Cowen was listed number 2 and thus number 3 was counted. If more FF first preferences around Tullamore went Fitzpatrick's way, Cowen would have needed those transfers down the line.Plain of the Herbs wrote:On 36%, logically two FF seats shouldn't have been on at all, but the actuality is that Fitzpatrick came within 170 votes of a seat, and any kind of FF vote management would have carried the day. Granted Fitzpatrick was just 42 votes ahead of John Foley at the time of the latter's elimination. The swings and arrows of the single transferable vote.
And quite a broad similarity between Offaly's Local election results and GE16's results.Lone Shark wrote:Similarly now, there was no way that FF were going to win two seats with 36% of the vote, so for all Ivan Yates' prognosticating in favour of it on Newstalk, Fitzpatrick was never in with any real chance.