Thursday, May 24, 2007
Voting gets under way
Well May 24th has finally arrived and the Irish electorate are busy determining who will run the country over the next couple of years.I just got back from my local voting station which I must say was pretty quiet. For a second I thought I'd wandered into the local Liverpool fan club (well done AC Milan by the way).
How did I vote you ask? Well I gave my first preference to Labour and I gave transfers to Fine Gael and the Greens. Fianna Fáil, the PDs and Sinn Féin received diddly squat from me. Here's hoping my compatriots vote along similar lines and get rid of this corrupt shower of incompetent buffoons!
Voting closes at half past ten tonight and counting begins at 9am tomorrow morning. This election is expected to be one of the tightest in this state's history so if you haven't voted yet I urge you to do so because your vote certainly does matter in this election.
Turnout was 62% in the 2002 election so it will be very interesting to see if we can better that this year.
I have already touched on how many seats I see the parties taking but in case you missed that, here is how I calculated matters:
Fianna Fáil - 68 seats (-10)
Fine Gael - 50 seats (+18)
Labour - 20 seats (-1)
Greens - 9 seats (+3)
Sinn Féin - 8 seats (+3)
Progressive Democrats - 3 seats (-5)
Ind/Others - 8 seats
Since 84 is the magic number required, by my figures that would leave Fianna Fáil and Labour the obvious option for a coalition government. I'm hoping I'm wrong though and that Fine Gael, Labour (and maybe the Greens if need be) can form a government instead. We'll have to wait and see how things go.
Like I said in a recent post, hopefully the "Next Steps" that Fianna Fáil have mentioned in their election manifestos will ultimately turn out to be the steps leading out of Dáil Eireann.
# posted by United Irelander @ 2:33 PM 
© 2008 United Irelander.
