Irish Elections

Donnchadh ó Laoghaire: Sinn Fein is now a serious player in every part of this island.

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Continuing on with our series of reports from elections in the Irish Republic, Sinn Fein candidate for Ballincollig Carrigaline in Cork, Donnchadh ó Laoghaire, writes for Slugger about Sinn Fein’s performance… The first person I ever voted for was Henry Cremin in the 2007 General election. I didn’t really know him, though I might have met him once or twice. Mostly I knew him by reputation. Henry wasn’t a councillor at the time, but was known in my own neighbourhood in Togher, …

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Women candidates and Political Parties in the 2014 Republic of Ireland local elections by Claire McGing

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Claire McGing currently lectures political geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She has published research nationally and internationally on gender in Irish politics, north and south. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Local elections are due to be held in the Republic of Ireland on Friday, May 23rd. Compared to the last contest in 2009 the electoral landscape is rather different: 774 town and borough council positions have been abolished and the number of county/city councillors has risen …

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Sinn Fein and the south-where do they go from here? #SFAF

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In September, I wrote a post about the rise of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland not being all that it seemed. So, I thought with the party’s Ard Fheis being this weekend I would take a quick scan of the party’s electoral performance in the Irish Republic. (There are no in-depth databases on Irish elections as the main website is currently down so bits of this are patchy) While I was critical of the party’s rise being based on fundamentally …

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Lab + SF = FF + FG + 18.4%: #aras11 warm down

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Presidential elections don’t tend to tear the space-time fabric of Irish politics. But as mood shifts, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese both managed to encapsulate subtle moves away from the manichean nonsense of patrician Catholic ‘civil war’ politics south of the border. The soon to be returned 9th President, Michael D,  will happily cite them as examples of why any judgement on him should be deferred to hindsight. At least he won’t be burdened by the dire forecasts that the 8th President carried into office with her. While …

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Slugger Awards tickets / Irish Election prediction competition

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One of the features of the Slugger Awards night (places limited! Get your tickets now while they last!) is going to be a bit of audience participation – we’re going to see how close the wisdom of the crowd can get to predicting the final outcome of the Irish Election in terms of seats. Details of that will be released on the night (it’ll be a surprise) but in the meantime, we also want a prediction comp to run though …

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