Talk:2007 Irish general election

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Premature

This article is premature - it has the wrong name because nobody knows when the election will be, and Wikipedia is not a crystal ball --Henrygb 21:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See US presidential election thread 2008, neutral speculation is fine, ie expected candidates etc...

Latest date for election

I've changed the reference to the latest possible date for the election. The five year period is calculated not from the date of the previous general election (17 May 2002) but from the date of the first meeting of the 29th Dáil (6 June 2002). This means that the Dáil must be dissolved within five years from that date: see Constitution of Ireland Art 16.5 and Electoral Act, 1992 s 33. The general election must then take place not later than thirty days after the date of dissolution: Art 16.3.2° and Electoral Act, 1992 s 96(1)(a). --Todowd 15:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the reference about the constitution allows the election to be held no later than 2009. This is not true. Article 16.5 of Bunreacht na hÉireann allows the Dáil to sit for up to seven years and crucially it adds; or a shorter period that may be fixed by law. This period has been fixed at five years so legally and constitutionally the election must take place by July 2007. Only if no law had been passed for a shorter limit would the constitutional limit of seven years apply. I have mentioned this in a footnote. Snappy56 19:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, isn't it de facto next to impossible that this will not take place in 2007? I don't know of the usual intervalls between calling an election and actually holding it in Ireland, but it's only two more months until 2007... Can we move this to Irish general election, 2007 already? Just wondering. —Nightst a llion (?) 20:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've read so many articles lately which assume that the election will be in May 07 to consider this move safe. —Nightst a llion (?) 18:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A week is a long time in politics (the coalition could collapse tomorrow and we'd have an early election). So I've changed it back, and added Lenihan's comments as a suggested date. Also as far as I can see it is still possible for the election to take place in 2006 (there appears to be no constitutional minimum time allowed between the dissolution of the Dáil and an election, just a maximum time) so I propose to move it back. Demiurge 18:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mh. I'd prefer to put some research into whether there's really no minimum time allotted, and then to consider how likely it is that there will be elections this year -- if we should come to the conclusion that it's still realistically possible to have elections in 2006, this article should be at Next Irish general election, not the former title, to make it have the same title as the other elections with indeterminate dates. D'accord? —Nightst a llion (?) 19:39, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so the Electoral Act 1963 gives this sequence of events once the Dáil is dissolved (I can't find any section in any later Electoral Act that amends this):

[1]: "Where the Dáil is dissolved, the Clerk of Dáil Éireann shall, immediately upon the issue of the Proclamation dissolving the Dáil, issue a writ to each returning officer for a constituency directing him to cause an election to be held of the full number of members of the Dáil to serve in the Dáil for that constituency."
[2] "the last day for receiving nominations shall be the last day of the period which consists of the nine days (disregarding any excluded day) next following the day on which the writ or writs for the election is or are issued."
[3] "A poll at a Dáil election...shall be taken on such day as shall be appointed by the Minister by order, being a day during the period which consists of the nine days...next following the period which consists of the seven days...following the last day for receiving nominations"

So I make it 9 days for nominations, then 7 days for campaigning (not counting Sundays/bank holidays under [4]), then the election. So roughly 3 weeks after the Dáil is dissolved is the earliest an election can be held. (This "three weeks" figure is my original research so it probably shouldn't go in the article.) Demiurge 20:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough; still, I'll move it to next Irish general election to standardise it with other articles of the same type. —Nightst a llion (?) 21:02, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since the article puts the date firmly in 2007 now and since it's impossible to hold the election between now and 31 December, I've moved it again. —Nightst a llion (?) 21:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Naming convention

I would like to resurrect my previous idea to change the current naming convention for elections. The current convention is:

Use the format "Demonym type election, date", for example "Canadian federal election, 1867"... (WP:NAME#Elections}

I propose this is changed to allow two alternatives, as follows:

Use either this form: political division type election, date, or this form: political division election of date. For example, Canadian federal election, 1867 or Canadian federal election of 1867. Where an article has been created using one form, do not move the article to the other form.

This new option would make linking more natural and make the article names more encyclopedic.

Please comment on this proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#New elections proposal

Thanks AndrewRT(Talk) 23:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dáil membership changes

Is there a restriction on Dual mandates preventing holding both a Dáil(national) and a European Parliament seat? It was brought in, in the North recently, which led to John Hume and Ian Paisley standing down, I had assumed it was handed down from Brussels Fasach Nua 16:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have a recollection that the bar included an exception for five years for incumbant dual mandatees to make it easier to bring in. Timrollpickering 17:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about a list of candidates per constituency, or a link to one? Even RTÉ's website seems a bit sparse concerning this. Also, the heading of this section is a bit presumptuous. The electorate will decide the membership changes on 24 May. What about "TDs not seeking re-election" or similar?--Dub8lad1 10:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See previous elections eg Irish general election, 2002 for an example of how the Membership changes section will look after the election has taken place, when some candidates will have lost their seats. Given that some candidates are retiring, there WILL be changes. A list of candidates sounds like a lot of work. There are already candidate lists on wiki.politics.ie and ElectionsIreland.org--Rye1967 11:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Because Liz O'Donnell actually represent Dublin South (not as stated, Dublin South Central), I have consequently amended the box to change Dublin South Central to "Dublin South" beside Liz O'Donnell's name. (Irishman 01.01 AM GMT 27/05/07)

If you tally up the figures from the results graph there are 167 seats counted - one too many. Also, FF is listed as gaining 3 seats but went from 81 to 78 seats - looks like a loss to me. This fouls up the numbers in terms of number and percentage of seat changes.

"for the 165 of the 166 Dáil Éireann seats."

Doesn't make any sense to me, I've changed it. —Nightst a llion (?) 10:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Ceann Comhairle does not have to stand for election. Have changed it back.--Dub8lad1 10:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"At every election, some outgoing TDs have lost their seats."

Tautology or bungled attempt to actually say something?

Not a tautology: "Outgoing TDs" refers to all the members of the previous (dissolved) Dail. This is a typical term you will hear and see used in the Irish media.

I had added that sentence in advance of the election in response to the above comments questioning the need for the Membership changes title, as a hint to readers that after the election there would likely be some who had lost their seats, but of course there was also the tiny possibility that non would lose seats in this election so I couldn't write that it would happen for certain. Now that it has taken place and some have lost seats, I have replaced the offending sentence. :) --Rye1967 19:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Incoming results

Do we want to update the table as results come in - or do it all at once at the end? (FF just got the first result - candidate returned in Dub Mid-West). Bastun^{BaStun not BaTsun} 13:22, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changes over the last 20 years

I can't put this in any article, since it's OR, but I think it's interesting all the same: if you look at the results of every alternate election since 1989, it becomes clear that very little has changed at all! Worth bearing in mind whenever anybody talks about "seismic shifts" etc.

Irish General Elections – 1989 - 2007
Party		1989	Seats 1997	2007	1989	% vote 1997	2007
	Fianna Fáil	77	77	78	44.1	39.3	41.6
	Fine Gael	55	54	51	29.3	27.9	27.3
	Labour Party	21*	21*	20	13.1*	12.9*	10.1
	Progressive Democrats	6	4	2	5.5	4.7	2.7
	Green Party	1	2	6	1.5	2.8	4.7
	Sinn Féin	0	1	4	1.2	2.6	6.9
	Others	6	7	5	5.3	9.8	6.7
Totals		166	166	166	100.0	100.0	100.0
*includes total of Labour plus those WP or DL TDs who subsequently joined Labour

Scolaire 17:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting stuff. I don't think it's original research if you just complied the data from official sources though, maybe it could be used in some article, perhaps as part of a more general analysis of Irish elections. --Hibernian 16:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's very interesting (and a little depressing), but I think you're right that it's ORish. Maybe you should write a letter to the Irish Times, and then get someone to quote you. :) (It did occur to me that we were essentially back to where we were two elections ago, but I was out of the country the week following the election, so I'm not up on commentary on the matter.) Alai 13:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proportion of votes - Fianna Fail

Just a clarification the table does indicate that the first preferences proportion for Fianna Fail increased by a marginal 0.1% on the last election. Thou' thats hardly squeezing the smaller parties, and Green Party and Sinn Fein actually increased their proportion of votes. Djegan 22:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Table

I added a new table to the article as the larger table is fairly messy.Please don't delete it. The H-Man2 18:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Parties"/not parties

Should entities that are not political parties (e.g., ICP, Fathers' Rights, etc.) be listed in the table showing the percentages/numbers of first preferences by party? What about People Before Profit, who registered after the deadline (which we'll need a cite for)? Technically, its factually incorrect to list them on the table; but it does provide useful comparison information. Maybe an asterisk next to those entities' names, pointing to the information added today: [5]? Bastun^{BaStun not BaTsun} 16:27, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'd be happy with the asterix approach. It's a similar approach to that eventually agreed on the position of Republican Sinn Fein's candidates in the Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2007. Warofdreams talk 18:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Table of Results

The numbers of first preference votes don't add up to the total.

I don't know how to edit the table but the numbers that need to be fixed are:

People Before Profit 9,333

Fathers Rights 1,355

Immigration Control 1,329

Irish Socialist Network 505

Independent 106,429

Invalid votes [a new line] 19,435

The table will now sum correctly.

The numbers can be found at both electionsireland.org and http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/publications/Electoral_Handbook1.pdf

Remember, the four party affiliations above weren't listed on the ballots so if we want to keep them in the table (which I think is a good idea) we have to remove those votes from the total for independents.

Electionsireland.org lists Gerry Browne in Kildare North as Independent Labour. If we add Independent Labour to the table we need to make the following additional adjustments.

Independent Labour [a new line] 145

Independent 106,284

Thanks, I have added in the updated figures, including the spoilt votes. Not adding Independent Labour as the table is big enough already, and its just a 1 person splinter group. Snappy (talk) 08:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After the change the percentages didn't reflect the numbers of votes. I'll update the percentages.--Cavrdg (talk) 16:58, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Graphic

I've created graphical representations of every Irish election result to add to each election article. The information in the graphics have been checked and double checked, if anyone notices any errors however please do notify me. Due to the large amount of Irish parties that claim green as their colour, I decided to choose a gold/yellow scheme for Fianna Fail, as that party claim them as their alternate colours. This prevents the party from being confused with Sinn Féin, the Green Party or other republican groups in the earlier election.

I hope people enjoy the graphics and find them useful. JandK87 (talk) 18:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

'Last election' in info box

The 'last election' referred to in the info box is the 2002 election. But for readers today, 2007 is the last election. This is confusing. It would be more accurate to refer to the 2002 election as the 'previous election' or just the '2002 election'. When I try to edit this line, the whole line disappears. How can it be changed? Asmaybe (talk) 11:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox

User "Snappy" has asked me to discuss the infobox on this page before reverting it. All Irish election pages from 1918 to 2002 use the larger version of the infobox with party leaders' pictures. It is only 2007 and 2011 which have the slimmed-down version. Both of these pages did have the larger version until "Snappy" himself changed them on 1st October. He made these changes himself without discussing them on the talk pages at all.

I would submit there is no consensus for altering the original infoboxes and it makes no sense for the Irish election pages from 1918 to 2002 to retain the larger versions but for 2007 and 2011 to be different. I am therefore reverting "Snappy"'s change. 86.147.208.85 (talk) 15:49, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think it makes sense to change all of them, rather than revert the changes to these two, as the change was an improvement. Number 5 7 15:59, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The emerging consensus on wikipedia for election articles is use Infobox legislative election, see Next United Kingdom general election. Yes, I have been replacing the infoboxes on Irish general elections, its called being WP:BOLD. I agree with User:Number57, it makes sense to replace all of them. Snappy (talk) 17:40, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Snappy, being bold is good but if you are reverted then accept that you were reverted.

With regard to the "emerging consensus" to use this template, I see no evidence for that. What I do see is that it is used on just 30 pages. More that 25% of which you added it to over the last few days (Irish general elections). And >50% of which Number 57 added it to in May (Israeli general elections).

The template is visually pleasant IMO. However, it makes very substantive changes. Not least among this is that an awful lot of information is dropped. The Taoiseach element is also unsatisfactory IMO because it doesn't account for change of taoisigh between elections, such as in 2007-2011 (Brian Cowen) or 1992-1997 (John Bruton).

I'm also reverting the changes you made but I'm sure there's a way to improve the template to everyone's satisfaction. --Tóraí (talk) 23:59, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Tóraí: I was merely fixing to the newly-renamed parameters added when the infobox was converted from a purely Israeli one to a wider one to be used for other countries. It was actually added to the Israeli election articles by TheCuriousGnome back in 2012.

Also, your argument about how few pages this is used on doesn't really make sense. Any new infobox will have relatively few uses at the beginning, and any "we can't use it because no other articles do" type of argument just leads to a Catch-22 situation where the infobox can't be more widely used because it isn't already more widely used. Number 5 7 11:38, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarity. I see now that it began life as Template:Infobox Israeli Election]. And apart from 3 pages, it remains used exclusively for Israeli elections.

My argument about how few pages the template is used on was in repsonse to Snappy's claim that "[the] emerging consensus on wikipedia for election articles is use Infobox legislative election". There is no such emerging consensus as can be seen from the template use.

The way to use a new info box more widely is to gain consensus that the current infoboxes need to be replaced. Then you need to agree with others what to replace the current infoboxes with. Bear in mind that that might end up being different to what both what we have now AND what you propose now. --Tóraí (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

User:Tóraí has reverted my changes, basically because he doesn't like it, doesn't want to changes anything ever. Infobox legislative election does account for change of taoisigh between elections, see [6], same as the other infobox. I have reverted the Next Irish general election to use Infobox legislative election, so that it matches the UK article. There may be no consensus to use it on previous elections, but there is one to use it on future elections. Snappy (talk) 13:15, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've been reading with interest this discussion for a while. I do not agree with the addition of the new infobox. Aside from the reasons I already explained in the Sep 2015 Greek election article talk page when an issue arose on the infobox width, I also believe that the addition of the new infobox should be the exception, not the rule, and should be considered on a case by case basis unless a Wikipedia-wide consensus is achieved on the change of the election infobox format.

Also, there are some point where I disagree with you:

1. You said there was "emerging consensus" on the addition of the new infobox. But you can't prove where that "emerging consensus" is. It is mostly (and basically) used in the Israeli election articles, and a few more. It seems there is consensus or, at least, not-opposition to its use in the Israeli elections as a general rule (which is fine), but that general rule consensus has not been reached for other countries' articles.

2. You argue that the infobox should be used here because of Next United Kingdom general election article. I can point to Canadian federal election, 2015, Next New Zealand general election, Next Australian federal election and a lot more as examples of articles for next elections where this infobox is not used. Namely, because for the Next UK general election there are some circumstances that may explain the use of such infobox that are not present in this article (namely, the enormous disparity of vote/seats results between UKIP (third political force in terms of vote share but only winning 1 seat) and SNP (third political force in terms of seats but fifth in popular vote) in the 2015 election which would force one of them to be left out of the infobox if the traditional one is used).

I've reverted the infobox to the previous consensus version, at least until consensus for the addition of the new infobox can be reached for the Next Irish general election article.

Btw, shouldn't this be discussed there instead of here? Impru20 (talk) 13:33, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Snappy, that's a needless personal attack.

There may be no consensus to use it on previous elections, but there is one to use it on future elections. Future UK elections, perhaps. --Tóraí (talk) 18:18, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:2007 Irish general election/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Importance upgraded from low to mid; a general election in a modern democracy is an important historical event. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 00:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 19:06, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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