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THERE HAS BEEN a lot of talk about an early election in the last few weeks – but how many people actually want one?
According to a new poll the majority of people don’t want an election this year, while almost one in five don’t know.
The poll was carried out by Amárach Research for RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live.
Last week Fianna Fáil Leader Micheál Martin said that his party was “fully determined” to avoid an election until at least the end of this year and perhaps early next year.
Martin said that he wants to honour the confidence and supply agreement which was signed in 2016 and committed his party to facilitating three Fine Gael budgets, the third of which is due later this year.
When the Claire Byrne Live show asked, “would you like to see a general election take place this year?”, it found that the majority of people didn’t want one.
The results of the poll are:
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They are simply telling us what they want us to believe.
This minority FG government don’t have any mandate for the policies they are pursuing.
The ” supply and confidence” contract with FF works as a defacto coalition, and is making a mockery of democracy by denying people of the right to effective opposition in the Dail.
Despite what these polls tell us, both FF and FG know they would lose more seats in a GE simply because of the devastation and division they have caused on society
If for one moment either FF or FG thought they could win a GE, again the polls tell us they would, they would go to the country in the morning.
Neither will because they know the truth.
@Dave Doyle: what polls have shown that FG or FF would win an election? That is simply not true. Both hover around 30 which is no where near enough for an overall majority.
@Jane: And what are we left with? Establishment parties, one of which lost 26 seats in the last GE yet ignore that lesson and continue with policies that lost them those seats and are causing even more social devastation.
Since 1983 (i think) both establishment parties have steadily lost the combined percentage of votes in GEs to the point that neither will ever be able to claim majority support for their policies
People have had enough of Trevelyan style policies that bring famine in many areas and services that only effect ordinary people.
@Jane: and what poll has shown a result that would be different to what we currently have? If you believe the polls then FG might win a couple more seats but still not enough to form a majority government, we’ll be in the same situation again
@Dave Doyle: the problem you have is that both of those parties are still favored by the majority over the other options. Absolutely they’ve lost support but they haven’t been annihilated.
FF lost 50 seats in 2011 and they got 23 back of them in 2016. That shouldn’t have been possible. The other parties should have been cleaning up in the 2016 election but they weren’t. SF gained 9 seats which under normal circumstances would be a decent show but in an election, where the country had turned against the outgoing government (FG) and FF had only a few short years previous ruined the country, people went back to FF.
@John Meade: exactly John, that is my point. We bitch and moan but obviously the majority don’t want drastic change. That’s the reality.
@Dave 100% correct and the numbers in this poll prove it
@Jane who said overall majority aNywhere????
@Nigel O’Neill: Dave did, second last paragraph.
@Jane: No matter how it’s twisted, neither FF nor FG combined or individually command any sort of majority. Or ever will again, as things look. Despite what any poll tells us.
We need a GE simply to get an effective opposition to curb the excesses of the neoliberal policies that are causing so much devastation for society.
The way things are not one party will ever command an overall majority again.
And that’s all the more reason to vote and vote wisely.
@Dave Doyle: ‘@Jane: No matter how it’s twisted, neither FF nor FG combined or individually command any sort of majority. Or ever will again, as things look. Despite what any poll tells us.’
If that were true we would have what we have as a government today.
@Jane: wouldn’t.
@John Meade: not quite. A supply and confidence arrangement won’t be tolerated again ..
@Shane Zerbe: i think you’re right there but that leaves a whole new problem, who forms the government, there would never be agreement it would be a mess regardless of who has the most seats in the Dail
@Dave Doyle: nothing in recent polls to suggest we wouldnt see more of the same . No opposition parties have anything new or progressive to offer us
@Gordon Hughes: To be honest neither do the FF or FG it’s more or the same nothing new and nothing ever changes. FG are desperately trying to get back the seats they lost in Tipperary, every week one of the Ministers or Leo himself have been down trying to promote the candidates. But from the same pool as before nothing new most of the Candidates are from the Family Dynasties caring on the same old “We Listen to the People Politics”. FF are the very same dynasties and carry on as before people will forget the bad old days. This is why in our area many of the independent politicians get elected including Lowry. The only reason that Alan Kelly got elected was by vote transfer. I will vote for anyone but Labour/FF/FG again in my life and I will indeed make sure that even my grand-kids will never vote for them either after what they did to our Beautiful Country.
@Dave Doyle: There would be no difference because, like it or not, the will of the people is tied up in FG or FF as there are no alternatives. A general election would be a pointless money-wasting exercise.
@Mike: That’s what you’re sent her to tell us Mike. The alternative is to reduced these parties to such a powerless extent that even if they manage to form a government, they won’t be able to fart crooked.
How many people out of 5 million approx. were polled? 1000? The equivalent of 7 or 8 of the attendance of an All Ireland final?
@Father Hody Commody:
Maybe read up a little on the maths behind how polling works. A polling sample of 1000 will return an accuracy with a margin of 3% in 95% of polls taken.
@Father Hody Commody: aww its cute you dont understand how polling works, id bet if it had the loony left with a majority youd be extolling the virtues of polling and demanding an election tomorrow
@Ian McNally: ‘Looney left’?
What does that mean, exactly?
Would it mean driving the country over €200 billion in debt?
Or having over 700,000 people on hospital waiting lists?
Maybe the ‘looney left’ would stand over a corrupt police force like FFG do?
Or perhaps they would invent scams like HAP and RAS to enrich the landlord ‘class’?
How about they drive the price of housing out of the reach of most young people trying to provide a home for their young families?
Maybe they’d invite vulture funds here to pick over FF’s property carcass and then allow them pay no tax on their illgotten gains?
Perhaps the ‘looney left’ would have people on the higher tax bracket at a miserable €34k?
Are the above the result of the ‘looney left’?
Get a mirror, ‘Ian’, and take a long hard look at yourself.
@VeeryDrink: best to ignore neckbeards. Too much internet warps their minds.
@VeeryDrink: ohh i forgot the alphabet soup brigade had magic solutions to all those issues, they might actually achieve something if they werent all constantly fighting about which version of socialism was the right one and constantly fracturing and starting new parties, far left policies wont fix our problems and neither will far right, centrism is the only way to go but people like you dont understand the conceot of compromise as you always need to be the winners and prove how right you are
@Ian McNally: You think neoliberalism is centerism?
Neoliberalism is the worst form of capitalism there is. And it’s what drives FFG.
@Dave Doyle: did i mention neoliberlism or FG once? Thanks for proving my point though about the lefts with us 100% or against us attitude though
@VeeryDrink: Well Said!!
@Ian McNally: you say that to all the people on trolleys everyday in our hospitals or on waiting lists. Our roads are gone so dangerous that we shouldn’t even be driving on them. We have the most vulnerable living from hand to mouth and many of the next generation living in a hotel or B&B how would you like that for your kids or grand kids? We are raising a population of have’s and have not’s and putting one class against another just like back in beginning of the state, where you have the business people’s kids up front and the working man’s kids in the back of the class and teacher wouldn’t care if they were though or not. Going backwards we are instead of forward.
@Ian McNally: maybe you can tell us the solutions the FFG party have?
Seems to me they’re making things worse the longer this farce government goes on.
@VeeryDrink: its quite funny how you seem to think i support FG amd FF again just proving the point that if you dont support the left 100% then you are the enemy
@Charliegrl80: i really cannot see how your post bears any relation to anything ive said
@Ian McNally: I know you’re suffering from the St.Peter syndrome that afflicts FFG supporters. Your “loony left” gives you away.
Neoliberism is exactly what you get with FFG.
@Ian McNally: so what label do you use to label FFG, grow a pair for once and tell us ? Your quick on the draw to label the looney lefties …
@Dave Doyle: apparently if your not a fan of FFG, your a looney lefty, by Christ dont talk about the crisis in healthm, housing etc – that would make you a bloody looney …
In some people eyes if you dont support FFG 100% then you are the enemy !!!!!!!
@Ian McNally: No, I asked you what solutions FFG have to the problems I outlined above.
In any case, if you aren’t a FFG supporter and you despise the ‘looney lefties’, that just leaves the right wing Labour party or the fruitcakes of Renua….
I have my doubts about a lot of these polls how they are conducted and where I was doing a survey 2 years ago on my political views and half way through they decided I wasn’t suitable for the Survey .I felt if I had said another political party the Survey would have gone on the fact that when I finished telling them how I was going to vote it was then I became unsuitable.
Not surprising really, it’s difficult to believe that they aren’t all the same or very similar.
Fg have now massively scaled back their their plans for income tax cuts and support massively rising property prices. Fair to say that they probably don’t represent those that they claim to!
they didn’t poll me. I want to vote &the sooner the better
@Dean Anderson:
You are in the 25% then aren’t you
What we need is political reform. What we’ve got is two old school inadequate parties offering the same thing, who work together to keep everybody else out when they’re both unpopular. In the interests of democracy, they should be prevented from working together in gov and forced to form gov coalitions with parties of differing views in order to give us a fairer gov.
FFs current position of complaining about everything but having no intention of changing anything is making a joke of our political system. Also FF and FG are full of substandard underqualified politicians incapable of managing anything.
Politicians are only there to feather their own pockets
It’s just a game to them
What’s the point in having an election and it’s either ff/fg in power all the time.two cheeks of the same arse.
@dick dastardly: bloody democracy…
MM would do anything to become taoiseach. FF needs to have a vast improvement in the polls for that to happen. More homeless, more trolleys, more evictions, higher property prices etc would suit FF. but can’t seem to land a blow on Leo. It’s a waiting game for MM and he’s in the last chance saloon. He can’t afford to get it wrong. This coalition of FG/FF has a while to run yet.
I don’t want to see a general election in 2019 either.
@Garreth Byrne:
what would be the point?
@Garreth Byrne: Well bully for you, I want an GE now and most people I speak to want an GE too!
Poll, politics, Claire Byrne, Amarach the fake news zeitgeist. To many assumptions in this tired and poorly written piece. I might as that Claire Byrne is no person of the people; “Susan Boyle is a freak” Abhorrent thing to say about a lady with aspergers, some may call Byrne a lazy correspondent? I think her ignorance is much deeper than that.
Must be a show of hands in the FF party,
Since when did the majority sentiment matter here?
I’d like to see an election every year, constant rolling electioneering, every lamp post weighed down with the hopeless faces of feckless wannabe diplomats. At least the fatigue would end the current system
Fear.. FFG have fear in em… More media crap.
It really is a sad time for politics, Fine Gael have proved they as inept as Fianna Fáil in running the county. They are both as useful as a fart in a spacesuit.
Lies worse government we had
An election will solve nothing, just more administrative shifting and delaying real work getting done.
When they’ve at least properly attempted to fix the Housing crisis and tried to reduce A&E waiting times they can come asking for my vote.
Leave FFG where they are.
Paddy needs to be educated.
Those who don’t want an election are telling the shmuks in office that they are doing a great job. This country is in the worst state that it’s been in decades. Homelessness, hospitals, and a housing crises. Yet they are paid more than ever. Disgusting.
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