iamBullivantAre we getting any sense, on the ground, as to why the two Irish Referendums went the way they did and not the way the marriage equality referendum went? I sense a lack of grass roots mobilisation, particularly by the young. But what other factors came into play? Was it, at least, partly, a vote of dissatisfaction with the government? Was social media a factor?
For anybody interested, the Irish Times have put out a good podcast dissecting the Referendum.
Shanecop@bullivant I think all of the above. Plus some voted as protest votes, and some didn't understand what they were voting on
Joan of Contention 😷@bullivant There's no comparison with marriage equality and repeal - none - so it's a mistake to have those as your starting point.
@clickhere I think that you are probably making a fair point. At first glance there is similarity but looking closer they are very different.
Mark@bullivant @clickhere It might not be the perfect frame, but there are similarities between the two, and it’s reasonable to ask whether there is another popular movement tending right that the political parties have not recognised?
I certainly do not buy the “the wording was terrible” explanation. Yeah, maybe, but these terms were obvious if small improvements. It should have been a safe “yes”. The result was a shock and to say otherwise is revisionism. And it hasn’t been understood imho.
@mark @bullivant No, there are no similarities of substance, beyond a superficial description of the referendum topics as 'social' issues. However, the marriage equality and repeal referendums are massively different to this year's. For a start, the former two arose from decades of ground-up advocacy and campaigning; these two, in how they were constructed, explicitly rejected decades of similar campaigning and the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly and Constitutional Convention.
Karl Stanley@clickhere @mark @bullivant I think what happened this time is that the Greens thought they could bank a win in advance of the GE by getting a progressive amendment passed, but they forgot that they are in coalition with right-wing conservatives who a) hobbled the progressive nature of the change by twisting the wording and b) failed to campaign with any sort of energy or conviction. You’ll note that none of this has anything to do with what the public actually want.
@karlstanley @mark @bullivant I don't know. I think civil servants and lawyers were the primary influence on changing the wording (all but confirmed by the leaked AG'a letter), with willing government members very happy to sign off on it.
Maybe Greens led the initiative, but my guess is Varadkar was the driving force behind it - for many reasons, most having nothing to do with the subject matter or referendum itself at all.
@clickhere @mark @bullivant This article suggests that at govt level it was a Green Party initiative (or at least that's how some Ministers are presenting it): https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/referendums/greens-point-the-finger-of-blame-for-referendums-vote-disaster-at-other-parties/a1628549309.html . FG's Charlie Flanagan is quoted as saying "Roderic O’Gorman jumped on the landmine with his eyes wide open and brought his colleagues with him.” Completely unlike the grassroots-led, huge-public-appetite Repeal and Marriage Equality refs.
@bullivant Yeah, it's easy enough to conflate them, due to superficial 'similarities' given that each referendum addresses what might be termed 'social' issues. But scratch that surface, and there is little these two and the previous two have in common, if anything.