The Irish General Election: A Guide for Folks From A Land Beyond the Wave

Conor Duffy

Conor is a neuroimmunology Ph.D student based in Dublin. He's particularly interested in science and health policy, liberalism, and how the two interact. You can find him tweeting @conorduffy_7.

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11 Responses

  1. James K says:

    So Ireland is controlled by a Grand Coalition of the two largest parties at the moment? How interesting, the possibly of such a coalition gets raised every so often in New Zealand, but its never happened. Has it proven to be stable?Report

    • Conor Duffy in reply to James K says:

      To be clear it’s not a grand coalition – one party is in a minority government, the other is in opposition but is in a confidence-and-supply arrangement that facilitates governance.

      It has proven to be stable-ish – it did last 4 years, out of a maximum 5 – but there’s been a number of moments where the possibility of the government collapsing was very real. I personally think that if not for the fact Brexit negotiations were ongoing for the duration of the government, it would have collapsed far sooner.Report

  2. I didn’t understand the quota formula at first glance, but a little reflection made it clear:

    Q = (V/(S+1)) + 1
    Where q is quota, V is votes, and S is seats.

    Quota should be the smallest number of votes that guarantees being in the top four. Take the numbers Conor gave: 20,000 votes cast for 4 seats; a fifth (V/(S+1) = 4000) isn’t quite good enough, since five people could all tie at 4000, and there’d be no clear winner, at least based in first-choice votes. But get even one additional vote, and it’s not possible for more than three people to tie or beat you.Report

    • Conor Duffy in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      Exactly Mike – the idea is to have an entirely unambiguous result for each seat. Without the plus one, while it would be incredibly unlikely, you could, in theory, get an exact tie between all seats. The extra one guarantees that each seat filled is done with a fraction of the votes that cannot be reasonably challenged.Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    Fascinating essay; I am curious how Brexit has affected the politics in Ireland.Report