Sondaggio Irish Times: il sostegno ai partiti del governo è costante come crolli di Sinn Féin

Fuckin incredible isn’t it, in nearly 100 years we’ve never elected a government that wasn’t led by FF or FG, and the way its going it will still be true 100 years from now. 

That’s not an endorsement of SF by the way but when you think of the seismic economic, demographic and social changes of the last century and not once have we as a nation opted for anything other than the political status quo. We are the electoral equivalent of people who eat the same sandwich for lunch every day.


The figures being quoted “since the spring” hardly matter, given the Irish electorate went to the polls in late November. On that ocassion SF got 19% and is still 3 points up on that (although in the GE they were down from 24.5% the last GE), FF got 21.9% and is par (with polls and GE), and FG got 20.8% and is almost 4 points below that (the GE result itself was near par for 2020 election).

Of course, these polling numbers and swings are entirely meaningless. People trooped into the privacy of the ballot box and gave us their true opinion, and some of them returned to moaning about the government in low stakes polling and others are sloshing their votes around between various parties.

This is all just hot air – we’re eight months post election in a five year cycle.

The parties that sit in the middle and hope our problems go away. People vote for local politicians. It’s difficult to vote against them because some are obviously doing good work.

However, the issues we are creating for ourselves could last for generations. Housing, infrastructure, public spending, immigration, etc. We are increasing public spending but not building any infrastructure. Building housing is down to 30k a year, but immigration is 140k a year. No one is making any decisions. And all the important areas of govt seem to be working against each other.

I find it helpful to see the figures without undecideds excluded. Here’s the numbers adjusted to include the 25% of voters who are undecided:

* SF: 16.5%

* FF: 16.5%

* FG: 12.75%

* SD: 4.5%

* Aontú: 1.5%

* Labour: 3%

* PBP-S: 1.5%

* Green Party: 2.25%

* Independents & Others: 16.5%

* Undecided: 25%


Pat Leahy down to salt over this.

This country will never change -_-

There really is no alternative.

If FFG could get tough on crime and immigration then they’d get more votes.

The alternatives are too left wing. Sinead Gibney of Soc Dems was on TV the other night complaining about the ‘giveaway’ budgets saying the budget has increased by 50% since covid while for their alternative budget they proposed massive spend increases, such as raising pension and dole by 25 per week and minimum wage by 2 euro per hour.

>The alternative budget proposed by the Social Democrats would see an additional €16.5 billion in spending next year (the Government has promised €6.4 billion), of which about half would be recurring spending.

Sinn Féin’s only consistent position so far has been their support for united Ireland and opposition to the British rule in NI, on every other issue their position changes depending on the latest public opinion polls (the latest transgender controversy is the perfect example). It is very difficult to respect or support a party that does not have an ideological spine. 

What we really need is another proper centre right party to stick it up to FF/FG, or maybe to create an unbreakable troika of power so we don’t need to vote anymore.

Jokes aside, make the Dail smaller and divest more direct power to Local Authorities, like swiss cantons, but without the same income taxation powers.

Most central departments could benefit from proper decentralisation too, and not just moving the office out of Dublin. I’m talking about putting central gov department teams in Local Authorities. Councils plan towns and growth for communities, but then get hamstrung because the dept of education are too stretched centrally to manage the growth all over the country, same with transport. Decentralise these functions into the councils so they can build and plan houses and the services so they all get built at the same time. Right now it’s cart before horse, because it’s all centralised.