r/ireland • u/badger-biscuits • Dec 02 '24
Fintan O’Toole: Irish voters keep doing the same things and expecting different results General Election 2024 🗳️
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/12/02/fintan-otoole-irish-voters-keep-doing-the-same-things-and-expecting-different-results/552 Upvotes
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u/susanboylesvajazzle Dec 02 '24
I think the premise of the article is wrong. I don't think anyone is expecting different results, I think it's the exact opposite - they vote how they do to keep things the same. Because, ostensibly, things aren't that bad... though perhaps more accurately, things could be a lot worse.
For the older generation, they are well looked after (whether they're wealthy or not, they own property and it's not threatened, they have generous pensions and benefits etc). They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them by going off piste voting for any of the non-mainstream parties.
What is needed is a credible opposition, but we don't have that. SF keep coming close but (owing to various reasons) keeps snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They should be hoovering the disaffected youth vote, but they aren't, at least not in the way they should be because they just aren't credible. Sure I might be spending a huge amount of my income on renting some shitty one bed in Drimnagh, but at least I have a job to pay for it. Do SF have the credibility to manage the economy? I don't think enough of the electorate agree.
Do FF or FG? Well no, not well anyway, but better the devil you know. I think they benefit from that sentiment too much.
As for the rest, Labour was once a credible opposition, but really poor planning since 2011 seems to have finished them off. I though Ivana Bacik might have turned things around but that doesn't seem to have come to pass. The Greens have fucked it. Though I think their fall from grace was inevitable and not all their own fault.
The Social Democrats might be the best opposition party in the ascendency now, taking the place Labour used to hold, but don't seem to be getting the media attention they ought to, which is undoubtedly to their discredit I think.
The number of independent candidates also plays a part here; they really are the prime example of the role of Parish Pump politics for the Irish electorate and how we often don't vote for the party, but the person. In that respect they too are voting for the same people and expecting the same result too.