Are you really failing to grasp that a ‘seismic shift’ to a left leaning republican party during a time of austerity and economic downturn yielded exactly what the same candidates would have achieved in the previous election with a minimal increase in the percentage of first preferences both candidates won?
The reason three candidates are running this time is that SF clearly suspect that the support has dipped and they’ll struggle to get quotas for the main two candidates. Hence they’ve a third candidate who will be eliminated and spread his transfers between the main two, pushing them either over or close to the quota.
The debate really was Nembo claiming that Donegal voters went from Fianna Fail to Sinn Fein as they vote for republican candidates and I called him out on this horseshit.
I’m still waiting for you to show you me a FF to SF voting swing in another constituency as there was in Donegal. This is the crux of the matter, this is where you have been exposed, again.
[quote=“croppy_boy, post:1746, topic:21776, full:true”]
Are you really failing to grasp that a ‘seismic shift’ to a non-party left leaning republican party during a time of austerity and economic downturn yielded exactly what the same candidates would have achieved in the previous election with a minimal increase in the percentage of first preferences both candidates won?[/quote]
That sentence makes no sense.
A non-party party?
It yielded exactly the same result. Except with 40% more votes and 2 seats instead of 0 seats. Apart from that, it was exactly the same.
You can’t just dismiss the statistics that don’t suit you. It was a huge shift to SF. It doesn’t matter if there was austerity, or if FF’s vote collapsed or anything else. Those factors helped SF grow but they don’t change the fact they had enormous growth.
They didn’t get a 1% increase. They got a 40% increase. One of those is more impressive than the other. By about 4000% on my count. That’s a fairly large difference.
“But it didn’t matter,” you’ll say. “That’s just %s of votes won. That’s not seats.”
But on seats they went from 0 to 2.
There are no other ways of explaining this.
You measure performance improvements by improvements in seats and/or by improvements in votes earned. On both of those counts, SF had a stellar improvement in Donegal.
Only on the @Croppy_boy copyrighted AlmostSeatsToRealSeatsMetric did they suffer where they only managed to convert 2 AlmostSeats to 2 RealSeats. That’s a shame. I’m sure they were kicking themselves at the disappointment of it all.
So an upturn in 2 seats compared to 0 between 2007 and 2001 and an 55% increase in first preference votes on average over the constituencies isn’t a huge surge? This including the fact that havin missed out on election in 2007, both McLoughlin and Doherty topped the poll. Doherty going through on the first count and McLoughlin on the third count.
And you are calling this a slight support change? You are a fucking idiot to be be still arguing this, you fucked up with your figures and you keep on digging. The constituency changes only come into effect this time round.
And I’m still waiting for you to show a comparable swing from FF to SF in the last general election.
@Nembo_Kid you can take SF prospering in the demise of FF in Dublin North West, Dublin Central and Louth if you want.
Your hiding from your claims that Donegal voters went from FF to SF because they like to vote for republicans and are concentrating on their increase in first preferences. I was making the point that the ‘almost’ achieved the same gain, two seats in 2007 but missed out by a miniscule amount.
As a matter of interest, if Doherty sees a drop in his sgarr if first preferences by 10% would you call this a seismic shift away from SF?
My point has been that in other areas of the country SF will struggle to garner the FF vote as it is the FF vote in those areas of the country does not hold any traditional republican values, in the border counties and those near the border region, the FF vote has historically carried some sort of republican value. You are an idiot to be arguing this as the statistics back it up.
I’ll have a look on Monday when I’m online more but I’m out of this for now due to Catholic commitments tomorrow.
But before I go. Will you call a drop in the first preference vote of 10% or more for SF in Donegal a seismic shift away from them? Yes or No will suffice.
I called a 55% increase in first pref vote a seismic shift, if there is a 55% drop in first pref votes in Donegal for SF I will call it a seismic shift.
Why are you supplanting in 10% for the benchmark figure we have established as the seismic figure?
Why are you using that as a reference point. I’ve established this figure countless times for you already.
55% was the increase in first pref votes for Donegal across both constituencies from the 2007 to the 2011 general election. That is what I called a seismic shift, that percentage shift.
Where are you getting 10% from? What relevance has it?
Numbers in context please. How many votes in numbers did FF lose? How many did SF gain? How many votes did FG and Labour gain in these areas of the FF vote?