Vote Left, transfer Left . . . then what? May 5, 2024
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
The recent suggestion by PBP of a transfer pact with ‘Left’ parties got me thinking of my own vote in the forthcoming elections.
I looked at the list of candidates for Dublin in the European elections. There’s some pretty unsavoury characters running. Much that my politics differs, surely Regina Doherty, Ó Ríordáin, Barry Andrews, etc, would represent me better in Europe than Niall Boylan or others of his ilk.
I wonder am I alone in this. Could candidates that wouldn’t normally be transfer friendly gain as they are far more palatable than a host of names on the ballot paper?
Still undecided on Clare Daly BTW.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
No, you’re not alone. After I’ve identified who I would like to fill the seats, I look at who I would want to never get in and give the remaining middle bunch preferences in order to get them ahead of the dangerous.
The real problem is that parties and candidates aren’t single issue entities. I can agree strongly with Barry Andrews on Palestine but disagree with him on EU economic governance.
My father was a Fianna Fáil activist, and his line was the party candidates 1, 2, 3 (back in the day when FF would have had three) and then stop. I once had a discussion with him about what he would like his view to do if it was transferred after the third FF candidate was elected or eliminated. (My mother mustn’t have been around because she banned us from talking politics.) Didn’t matter to him. Even when pushed: if it made the difference between a figure like Neil Blayney versus a Blueshirt like O’Duffy getting the seat? No difference, didn’t matter. Hitler or Mother Theresa? That was dismissed as silly.
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+1
I’ve been known to give Fine Gael an 8th or 9th preference 🤮 to keep the Mary Harney/Michael McDowell Progressive Democrats down.
Needs must.
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I’d do it in that case definitely
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That was real party loyalty. And in a way it makes sense. But I’m like you, I’m looking at the permutations And grey areas. The only thing is I tend to go in with a ranking but leave it a little vague as to who is number 1 2 3 etc and only firm up as I fill out the ballot paper.
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“My father was a Fianna Fáil activist, and his line was the party candidates 1, 2, 3 (back in the day when FF would have had three) and then stop”
My Da wasn’t an activist but was FF through and through, but always insisted that we should vote all the way down. I followed suit first couple of times I voted, but generally stopped after the least attractive left candidate since then. The fact that i may have helped get Alice Glenn elected had a lot to do with this.
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You’re not alone in this iel. And it gets more complicated. I always voted “far” left first, then transferred to the likes of Labour. But with the “far” left’s take on the imperialist Russian invasion of Ukraine, I’m in a bind. Not to mention SF, what with their reported Blairism and, there was something else wasn’t there… oh, yeah, their “war”.
Anyway as of now it looks like I’ll be voting neo-liberal SD, Labour, Green. Try to keep out the racists at local level anyway.
And iel, Clare Daly? Stick her in the same box as Niall Boylan. The box marked “not with a forty foot pole”.
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Yes, I was just thinking about this myself this morning before reading the post here, was it the Brendan O’Connor show that triggered it in us all I wonder? Hardly a coincidence? Anyway, yes, I can see myself voting down the ballot paper this time to include the centrist parties that I would never have given a preference to in the past. Anything to keep the far right down. Popular Front time.
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This useful. https://www.thejournal.ie/section/eu-2024/
The fascists right appear divided, too many fuhrers.
Most candiadates keep their declared programmes on the anemic side
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A shy and retiring lot these candidates from these groups
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People Preferring Regina Doherty and Labour over Clare Daly is an absolute testament to how far this site has fallen into pseudo left NATO apologism.
You make Paul Mason look principled
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She’s defended Assad bombing camps of Syrian refugees.
She’s opposed Netanyahu bombing camps of Palestinian refugees.
What is anyone supposed to make of that?
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Enzo, I often wonder do people bother to read anything with any degree of consideration before the red mist descends.
Go back and see what IEL wrote: that despite political differences with all those they mentioned – RD, AOR etc, they would be less worse than Boylan or those of the hard or far right.
I know this is difficult, but this was not about CD, it was about NB. And IEL pointed out that they weren’t sure about CD. The two particular issues aren’t linked. IEL has every right to have different issues about or not about any particular candidate, particularly those of the left. It’s literally nothing to do with NATO in the context IEL framed it. It’s about the far right.
Which means the complaints about pseudo left NATO apologist or Paul Mason are irrelevant in the context of this comment.
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This exactly prices the worth of PR STV. In a sense you are voting in order of disagreement or dislike from least objectionable to most. Principles are important, but, in essence, I would prefer electing a politician I disagree with half the time to one getting elected that I disagree with on everything
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I can only guess Enzo is referring to the claim that Daly belongs “in the same box as Niall Boylan”, which nobody else seems to have objected to. Boylan is the candidate of the far right; there’s a few other far-right candidates on the ballot paper for Dublin, but he’s the one who has by far the best chance of getting elected. He’s a media personality with a noxious record in his own right and he’s running for the party that definitely has the best chance of capitalizing on xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment in this election.
I’ve no problem saying that if it came down to Barry Andrews or Regina Doherty taking the last seat instead of Boylan, I’d prefer that outcome. It would be a disaster if he got elected; it would give confidence to all the worst bigots and thugs who are already far too confident about throwing their weight around. There was a rally of several thousand in Dublin yesterday organized by far-right activists, with people screaming about “traitors” and the like, a few months after there was a riot in the same part of town incited by the same crowd, and a few weeks after there was a racist murder in Clondalkin.
We can be absolutely sure that if Boylan gets elected, immigrants and people from ethnic minorities will be feeling more fearful on the day after the election and the day after that, and they’ll have good reason. That won’t be the case if Daly is elected (or Andrews or Doherty, for that matter). If you’d rather see Daly replaced by someone who you think has better politics—Brendan Ogle or Bríd Smith, SF or the Social Democrats—that’s one thing. But anyone who seriously thinks that it makes no difference whether Daly or Boylan is elected to Europe has really lost the plot and isn’t taking the danger of the far right seriously.
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Yep. I’m sure it was my comment referencing Daly and Boylan that got Enzo commenting. Just to be clear: I was advising iel to vote for neither Daly nor Boylan. I wasn’t saying it makes no difference whether Daly or Wallace gets elected. I was advising that people vote for neither so that neither gets elected.
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Just to step back from the immediate issue – the original comment by Enzo didn’t bother to even begin to parse out IELs post or your comment BJBJ and then just launched into an attack on the site. The question i have is, should we censor your comment BJBJ or IELs post. I have my issues with some of CDs stances over tge years but even still I don’t think she is at the Boylan level and would naturally prefer on balance her to Boylan if that’s the way it pans out but you or anyone are entirely entitled to take a different opinion. But doesn’t the fact I don’t fully agree with your opinion mean that the original charge of pseudo leftism etc is incorrect? Someone mentioned recently they’d noticed a really irritating phenomenon of hit and run comments – where people turn up, diss the site and then vanish. It’s a pity.
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Daly or Boylan.
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Just to be clear where I’m coming from on this: I’m not interested in going into Enzo’s stuff about “pseudo-left NATO apologists” or Paul Mason or what have you, which is neither here nor there. But I think we shouldn’t blur the line at all around Boylan and the other far-right candidates being a completely different kind of problem.
People can give out about Daly’s record as an MEP, her positions on Ukraine, Syria and other issues, and that’s absolutely fine. But just in the first few days of the official campaign, I’ve seen four separate reports of canvassers from left groups of all kinds (SF, PBP, Independent Left and the SDs) being threatened while putting up posters, including at least one case of women from the SDs being threatened with a knife. This is a new problem with Irish elections, we didn’t see it happening in 2019 or 2014 or 2009, and these guys are definitely operating in the slipstream of Boylan and the other far-right operators; they’ll be even more brazen if there’s a big vote or even a victory for the far right.
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Yep and in certain areas far left posters are being pulled down.
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Russian genocidal theocratic imperialist.
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That is Daly and Wallace.
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Here’s a handy who-not-to-vote-for guide:
Anyone who calls an imminent problem ‘a tsunami’
Anyone who calls more than one problem ‘a perfect storm’
Anyone who calls an increase ‘exponential’, unless it’s exponential.
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And any candidate who answers in a radio interview with, “That’s a good question.”
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I’d forgive them that. It’s a way of thinking about their answer without being silent.
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No forgiveness from me, Tomboktu. Annoyingly unimaginative and repetitive ploy swamping the airwaves.
On the other hand, any candidate who told an RTÉ or BBC interviewer, ‘That’s a shite/stupid question,’ would earn serious consideration of support.
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Pat Rabbitte on Vincent Browne, when Browne was on the RTÉ Radio 1 late night shift, responded to Browne’s muttering of “yeah, right, oh all right…” and sighing by stopping his answer and telling Browne that the way an interview worked was that Browne asked the questions and Rabbitte answered them, and Browne didn’t have to like the answers, but they were Rabbitte’s answers and Browne’s job once the question was asked was to let Rabbitte answer.
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I’d like to add to the list anyone who promises to ‘deliver’ – unless they’re talking about pizza.
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Sounds like this is about saving PBP seats instead of voting and transfer left. As a strategy for party advancement, it might work.
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Just a personal thing but here’s my own general set of rules when it comes to voting where PR system is in operation (obviously FPTP system is much more challenging in terms of decisions):
I think I’ll invent a computer programme where you just input the above and it churns out your list ready made for you 😆
In current circumstances, in local or Euro elections, I think this would mean I would start with candidates such as Cllr. John Lyons of Independent Left or those of An Rabharta Glas and moved down through PBP, SDs, SF and Labour but stop there – definitely not the Greens and never, under any circumstances, Daly or Wallace.
Of course this is all a matter of personal choice – I can stomach a high preference for PBP, Banjo can’t, even though we agree that they have a terrible position on Ukraine. I could stomach a lower preference for Labor, though others wouldn’t give them any vote because of their record in gov. etc.
All theoretical of course since I live in Scotland where we just get to put one X (or two for the Scot parliament) in a box, so count your lucky stars that you face the dilemmas of how to vote down the list!
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I substantially agree with Colm on the above. I tend to include Sinn Féin on Colm’s left borderline. Becoming more fine-tuned : when an SF candidate opposes racist marches on buildings which house immigrants, give that person a preference. If a candidate openly encourages racist activities – such as the awful Laois councillor Mr Mullins – campaign against him and demand that his party expel - as in the case of Mr Hoolahan in Tallaght. John Meehan
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BTW definitely would have Brendan Ogle at the top of the European list for Dublin – radical trade unionist with record of campaigning on water rates etc, supports Palestinians resistance to Israeli state genocide, anti racist, support for Ukrainian resistance to Russian imperialism.
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I’m definitely with you there, John.
Even after I left the WP/DL I never used to vote SF, hanging onto that party line that the Provos were really right-wingers and that they were the source of all evil. But gradually, partly through working with SF people In Finglas during the anti-bin tax campaign and, indeed working with other leftists like yourself John, Des Derwin etc. who had a different perspective on SF, and just by thinking it through a bit more, I came to the conclusion that SF, whatever they had been in the past were now a centre left party, albeit a nationalist one.
Of course they are now veering dangerously to the right on immigration, to try to stop voter leakage to the far right. So I guess one has to always adjust ones perspective according to the realities of the current situation.
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[…] Vote left, Transfer left, Then What? […]
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My vote is in South. I have looked through all 23 and there’s 7 I consider far right, 3 or 4 I’m unsure about. I will probably vote 1 to 14. I don’t really want to give any ffg candidate a preference but will this time out only as a tool to exclude the likes of Blight etc
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Kelly at least is a recent convert to the League of Ireland, so while he can’t get much funding for that from Brussels, he’s got that much going for him.
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Converted by the arrival of Kerry FG on the LoI scene? Votes are votes.
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Pretty much so, but his presence on the terraces was not long before the firing gun on this campaign was sounded. Just after seeing my first local election poster tonight, for the SD candidate, who happens to be of Nigerian heritage, so even if she has little prospect of success, the preference will have the additional bonus of serving as a rebuff to the various local “patriotic” contenders.
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PbP buddy of mine out putting posters on poles in Dublin tonight. Legal from midnight afaik.
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And they’re not alone.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/election-posters-popping-up-early-risking-150-fine-per-poster/a546352191.html
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I wonder are they betting on council litter staff having finished work at 5.30 so they won’t be able to get the evidence (or it’ll be too much hassle to prove it from the likes of videos for the purposes of evidence in the courts).
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Went out for a walk to look at the posters going up this evening. Met two candidates who said they got the all clear that no litter wardens would be operating tonight. Figured it was safer putting them up in daylight
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I used to always plump vote, giving it to one candidate only. Then changed my voting order of preference to accommodate left-leaning candidates alone. Now I will consider holding my nose and vote for FF or FG if this helps to scupper the vote of far right/respectable reactionary candidates. Somewhat like Colm B, I seek ‘… to adjust to take account …’ In my particular case, if there is an issue of struggle and action is taken to address it, that candidate gets my first preference (assuming they respect basic democratic norms and are not attention-grabbers piggybacking on existing campaigns).
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I used to always vote from the far left to the centre left, and stop there. But in the last election there was a clear extreme-right candidate on the ballot I went on to vote for FG/FF candidates on the basis that – for all their flaws- they’re not fascists.
As to how to order the FG/FF candidates, I found myself doing it on instinct – and FF came first.
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Incidentally, in an argument/discussion about voting all the way down the ballot a few years back, a friend said that it was pointless filling in the last vote.
At the time, I thought he had it wrong – but in puzzling it out later, I couldn’t find any situation where a vote that was, say, a no. 12 on a list of 12 candidates, could possibly be used?
Is that right?
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Well that’s what it feels like but I guess you could have a situation where it might
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I can’t think of a situation where stopping at 11 and leaving 12 blank would be any different from marking it to 12.
If your paper is to be transferred, there needs to still be a choice between two candidates (at least) at that stage in the count. If the sequence of surpluses and eliminations means that only two candidates remain, then it will go to the candidate marked 11 or higher, regardless of whether the other candidate is marked 12.
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That’s the way I see it, Tombuktu.
If they pick up your ballot to complete a transfer, they scan down the numbers for the highest remaining candidate. For it get to your ’12’ all other 11 must be eliminated, or elected – but if that’s the case, the election is already over.
I spent hours trying to find some obscure scenario involving dead heats etc – but I really don’t think one exists.
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I spent hours trying to find some obscure scenario involving dead heats etc – but I really don’t think one exists.
Hours well spent! 🙂
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