How the Irish General Election Works
How does the General Election work? Read on for all you need to know...
Irish General Elections are not held at fixed points in the calendar (as in the United States) but are called at the discretion of the Government (within a five year fixed term framework). The 2011 General Election will be one of the most extraordinary, closely-monitored and hard-fought campaigns in decades, but it will follow Irish election norms:
Duration
Whenever a General Election is called in Ireland, the Taoiseach is required under the constitution to ask the President to dissolve the Dáil. The President has a discretionary power under the constitution to refuse such a request but this has never been exercised. The Irish Constitution states that a General Election must take place no later than thirty days after dissolution of Dáil Éireann . In the most recent Irish General Election (2007) the campaign was 25 days long.
Key Features
The campaign is kicked off with the launch (by all parties) of their campaigns; this is usually followed quickly by the release of party manifestos at press conferences. Indeed, throughout the campaign, party leaders will make a campaign tour of the country and hold a series of issue-specific press conferences.
Party Political Broadcasts garner a lot of press coverage and public interest and are broadcast from the start of the campaign. In addition to this, RTÉ, the state broadcaster, will organise a series of issue-specific current affairs programs in which politicians from all parties will take part. Other broadcasters, TV3 and TG4 will also likely broadcast their own election-focused programmes.
Polls
In the 2007 election, the first official series of Irish Times/TNS MRBI Election polls was conducted in early May (the election was called on Sunday 29 April and polling day was Thursday 24 May 2007). Red C also carried out a poll for the Sunday Business Post on 6th May. The Sunday Business Post carried out a further poll on 13th May.
A week before the election, the Taoiseach appeared on a televised debate with the Fine Gael leader on the national broadcasting channel, RTÉ. This performance had a big impact on the last weekend of the campaign and gained huge ratings and high media interest. Another television debate took place on the previous night involving the four smaller party leaders. The Irish Times took a second poll after the two debates, which showed momentum shifting to Fianna Fáil after a strong performance by the party's leader. The RTÉ Exit Poll revealed that 68% of those who voted in the General Election had watched the Leaders' Debate on RTÉ. On 20 May, four days prior to the election, both the Sunday Business Post and the Irish Independent/Millard Brown took polls on the election. The Sunday Business Post took the final poll on 23 May, the day before the election.
Election Day
The polling stations operate generally from 7am, until 10.30 pm. Millward Brown Lansdowne Market Research were commissioned by the national broadcaster RTÉ to carry out exit polls on Election Day and the results were released on Radio 1 at 7 am the following morning. The poll had over 99% accuracy in its prediction of the first preference vote.
As far as practicable, the polling at every general election for Dáil Éireann must take place on the same day throughout the country and in 2007 the results were counted from 9a.m. the following morning. RTÉ broadcast live from key constituencies. The broadcaster compiled results and analysis of each of the 43 constituencies, which they updated on their website as the position changed.
Formation of a Government
As a result of Ireland's PR-STV voting system, most elections result in coalition Government. In the days after the 2007 election, negotiations went on for approximately a week and a half. These negotiations were considered quite lengthy at the time but this delay has been explained by the fact that Fianna Fáil had no previous coalition pact with the Greens and that the 31st Dáil represented their first time as a party to serve in government.
New Dáil
The newly elected Dáil must meet within thirty days from the result of the election. In 2007, the newly appointed members of cabinet received their seal of office on 14 June and the Dáil resumed on 24 June when Bertie Ahern was elected Taoiseach.
PR-STV
Proportional Representation-Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV) is the chosen Irish electoral system, with its basis in preferential voting.
PR-STV has been the electoral system of choice in Ireland since 1922 and it is enshrined in the Constitution. Past referendums to replace PR-STV with the 'first past the post' system (as is used in the UK) were defeated.
PR-STV voting is straightforward, as each voter ranks candidates - as many of them as he or she wishes - in order of choice. The voter does this by writing '1' in the space to the right of the photograph of their first choice, and may then write '2', '3', '4' etc beside the names of their second, third, fourth etc choices. Voters may rank as many or as few candidates as they wish, but obviously there must be at least one first preference to make the vote meaningful.
This system gives voters a wide degree of choice, enabling votes to be cast between candidates of different parties or non-party candidates. This becomes significant at the count.
Counting the votes begins with a calculation of the quota and is a multi-stage process, since the votes of eliminated candidates, and the surplus votes of elected candidates, are transferred to other candidates according to the next preferences marked on the ballot papers.
The quota is calculated as the minimum number of votes, which will fill the seats available and no more. For example, in a three-seat constituency, the quota is a quarter of the valid votes, plus one - only three candidates can get this number of votes. In a four-seater, the quota is a fifth of the valid votes, plus one, and so on. Any candidate whose first preferences equal or exceed the quota is deemed elected automatically.
A vote stays with its voter's first preference candidate unless and until he/she does not need it any more (either because he/she has been elected or excluded from the count - dependent on the calculated quota).
If a vote is transferred, it passes to the voter's next highest preference for a candidate still in the running. A voter's vote could transfer a number of times at the same election to lower preference candidates until they are either eliminated or elected - this is what constitutes the multi-stage process and what leads to often long, drawn-out counts.