Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sinn Fein: the Alliance party of the Republic?
Gerry Adams concedes that his party faces a lot of work in the next two years before the council elections in 2009. The sheer size of the gap between current political reality and the party’s own ambition is see when you consider that its performance compares unfavourably with the Alliance party in Northern Ireland. In the recent Assembly elections the Alliance Party garnered 5.2% of the vote and took seven seats in an Assembly of 109 members. Sinn Fein took 6.9% of Thursday’s vote, which brought them just four seats out of a total of 166 in Dáil Éireann.
Although on a better day they might have expected to made a gain or two on their previous total, the poor correlation between percentage of the vote and their seat tallies suggests that they have some considerable way to go before becoming accepted as part of the political landscape south of the border. That their sole surviving Dublin TD only made it with the help of transfers from several other leftist candidates also suggests they are fishing in the margins of an over crowded market.
The sheer foreign-ness of the party to most southerners is a major problem. Adams almost completely ignored Roisin Duffy’s question on This Week today that the widely held perception of the party was as ‘political tourists’ whose political legitimacy is part underwritten by their status as MPs, ie the Westminster parliament, and not the Dáil. There is little doubt that the heavily accented northern leadership is becoming increasingly incongruent to southern voters.
The failure to take even one of the two Donegal seats, and the large slippage in the support of Mary Lou McDonald’s vote in Dublin Central, presents a major problem for them going forward in this area.
Mick Fealty @ 11:00 AM
Anyone know what the percentage national increase/decrease in SFs vote is or indeed in absolute numbers? That is the type of figure which wolud be standard on the BBC. Although it has improved RTE website is still very poor - why dont they just copy the BBC?
How entertaining that Enda cannot form a governement without Gerry’s help - though I did hear him ( Enda ) wriggling on the issue on RTE radio - most amusing.
Perhaps Gerry should offer Enda a place on the army council in return for a cabinet position.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 12:45 PMI have been very impressed by Enda during the campaign.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 12:48 PMHave a look at the photo. The mastermind of Bloody Friday and Jean McKinney’s demise saying “Your Dublin. Your Future”. If so, f**k off back to your Donegal holiday home.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 12:56 PMSlug, he was very poor on RTE radio at 1.40.
He cant admit to himself the Grizzly holds the keys to power.
The tired old chestnut of the ‘people have spoken’ can be construed to state that the people have said that they want all the opposition parties including SF to form a government.
Go Enda & Grizzly & others
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 01:03 PMIt was Sammy Mc Nally what done it on,
RTE is miles ahead of the BBC as seen by their coverage of Northern Ireland’s Assembly elections.
BBC was totally primitive and didn’t have any method of following transfers and the like, which is essential under the STV system.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 01:20 PMGeorge, I think s/he meant Adams’ was the poor performance, not RTE’s.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 01:26 PMthey have some considerable way to go before becoming accepted as part of the political landscape south of the border.
I think it would be truer to say “south of Ulster and Louth”
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 01:30 PM“In the recent Assembly elections the Alliance Party garnered 5.2% of the vote and took seven seats in an Assembly of 109 members. Sinn Fein took 6.9% of Thursday’s vote, which brought them just four seats out of a total of 166 in Dáil Éireann.”
Ouch! Unflinching stuff Mick.Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 01:33 PMSammy, remember not to say anything negative about the Irish Republic while George is around :).
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 01:35 PMGoing into the next few elections, Sinn Féin can argue that they do have experience of government gained in Stormont. Working in Stormont should help the party understand about real policy implementation and budgeting et cetera. This means they might be able to put together a much better manifesto and then have say two years to push it with their enthusiastic members - by the time of the next election the public will have a real choice and the establishment will have one less excuse to attack Sinn Féin.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 02:06 PMAaron - running Stormont in d’hondt coalition with the DUP SDLP and UUP is a bit like running a council. The responsibilities are similar. I don’t think it really translates into evidence of policy detail in Dail elections.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 02:08 PM...that said, Aaron, I hope that they take the view that they need to run their ministerial positions in NI very well in order to reap electoral benefit, because then that brings a lot of stability to the arrangements.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 02:11 PMHas anyone seen a comparison on transfers yet? Are Sinn Fein beginning to make inroads there or will that too have to wait til next time?
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 02:13 PMSinn Fein: the Alliance party of the Republic?
Clever headline Mick, and vote share is similar, but I think there are a few differences between SF and Alliance.
It appears that SF has a few unique factors in 4 county Ulster/Louth, but in Dublin it’s just another left-wimg fringe group. Even in Dublin SC, an outgoing TD was outpolled by three health services/left Independents (added together) by 1,000 votes.
Alliance largely has the centre franchise to itself in NI, is now working with the two other centre MLAs, Deeny and Wilson, and is (slightly) growing.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 02:34 PMThe shinners increased their vote share by 0.4% from 6.5% in 2002, and voting figures up by approx 21500, but I think they may have stood in more constituencies than 2002 so hard to compare. Overall a pretty woeful result from “the only 32 county party”. Personally of course, I’m over the moon at that! ;-)
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 02:35 PMThe full number-crunching has yet to come, but for me SF’s problem seems encapsulated by Donegal NE.
The first count, up against a quota of 9637:
Joe McHugh 8711
Padraig MacLochlainn 6733
Jim McDaid 6724
Cecelia Keaveney 6362
Niall Blaney 6288
Half a dozen also rans holding and folding over 3500 votes between them.And, inevitably, MacLochlainn is squeezed out by Blaney on the eighth count.
My quick look suggests something similar elsewhere. SF is just not getting the transfers from minor parties and floaters.
Would it be wrong to assume that SF are not (yet) regarded as housetrained?
Then there’s the treble-edged pen of John Drennan in the Sindy:
Gerry also discovered the hard way that it is very hard to campaign in a foreign land where you don’t know the issues. Stick to your home parliament of Westminster, Gerry.Ouch!
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:08 PMGeorge,
my comments about RTE were in relation to their website. I think I saw they recently won an award - well the competition must have been dreadful. Obviously there is difference in funding with the BBC but the easy stuff RTE does not even do properly. An example is their breaking news which quite often does not updated over the weekend. Their election coverage just dried up on Saturday with nothing on the ongoing counts. Their were no percentage/actual increase or decrease figures that I could see.Intelligence Indider - thanks for those figures. I presume that FG, FF and SF increased their number of votes and Labour, Green and PDs saw a decline?
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:21 PMMalcolm Redfellow
The good people of non iron ( Gerry included ) have probably more in common with the ordinary people of ROI than many of those sporting their ‘Dublin 4’ mindset.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:30 PMFF were up 0.1%, + 68500 votes, lost 4 seats
FG were up 4.8%, + 146200 votes, gained 20 seats
Lab were down 0.7%, + 8500 votes, no seat change
Greens were up 0.9%, + 25400 votes, no seat change
PD’s were down 1.3%, - 17800 votes, lost 6 seats.Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:32 PMSammy Mc Nally what done it @ 05:21 PM.
The figures are out there. For the record:
FF 41.6% (-0.8%)
FG 27.3% (+4.9%)
Labour 10.1% (-0.7%)
PD 2.7% (-1.2%)
Green 4.7% (+0.9%)
SF 6.9% (+0.6%)
Rest: 6.6% (-4.3%)The difference in the number of candidates put up distorts those figures, notably so in SF’s case.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:36 PMMalcolm, I have FF at getting 41.5% for 2002 election, hence my + 0.1%.
Our other figures seem to match.Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:42 PMSorry about that duplication. And, yes, I got the FF figure wrong. It’s 41.6% for both elections.
Since Enda’s mob managed a swing of about 2½%, and went some long way to recovering pre-2002 positions, that should be recognised. I notice, though, that the ferrets are already after the Rabbitte.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:43 PMMalcom, Intelligence,
thanks for those figures.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 03:46 PMNo doubt a thesis could be written on why S/F ‘bombed’ (excuse the pun)in the election, however it’s simple,
1. Adams was not only badly out of touch with the real issues but on the one RTE phonein programme I listened to was repeatedly having to either justify or apologise for past IRA actions, even at the start of the programme it was obvious from his wee bit of ‘Irish’ that he was’nt a true Irish speaker and that it was just a tacky gimmick.
2. All the talk of Irish unity is a turn off, Souths attitude to the North is a bit like the oul peeler/guard outside the noisy pub, “keep it quiet lads”Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 06:34 PMI fully expect Sinn Fein to begin moderating their socio-economic policies in a rightwards direction after this disastrous election result, thus moving towards Alliance territory. After all Sinn Fein were a party of the right prior to the sixties lurch into “socialism”.
I have been struck by how many southerners perceived Gerry Adams as a lightweight “interfering” in their affairs. Better for him to concentrate on Belfast and Westminster where he is an MP.
Posted by on May 27, 2007 @ 09:03 PM
