Letters to the Editor: We should ask why political pollsters are so wide of the mark
A reader queries how political poll predictions were so wide of the mark regarding the performance of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.
One of things I observed in the recent French and British general elections is the volatility of the electorate. Linked to that, we see how people seem to be shifting their electoral preferences, sometimes very dramatically.
The idea of a stable electorate in those two jurisdictions seems to have been kicked out of the window for now. I think that this is similarly true for Ireland.
What I find especially worrying is that polling companies have managed to completely miss the mark with Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin in not one but two national elections in the past four years.
I believe that there are two things going on apropos to this imbroglio. One has to accept that online polling is now highly problematic. It appears that the polling companies were underestimating Fianna Fáil and overestimating Sinn Féin in a lot of their surveys.
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Many commentators are now positing the notion that the new era of electorates are much less stable than they used to be.
It seems to me that one can’t count on anybody’s vote anymore. I found it rather intriguing to glean that there was some recent polling done vis-a-vis the capriciousness of people’s voting.
Ostensibly many voters changed their minds regarding their voting preference and decided on the day in the ballot box about who they were going to vote for.
I don’t think tactical voting works so much in Ireland when juxtaposed to other jurisdictions because of our proportional representation methodology.
I have to ask what’s going on with our polling companies apropos to the data that they are getting especially when it comes to underestimating Fianna Fáil and massively overestimating Sinn Féin? What’s going on with their demographic polling?
A whopping €725m is planned to be given to RTÉ in a bailout package, while serious questions still remain unanswered about the media organisation’s financial accountability.
No one media organisation should be given such sums which will almost guarantee its monopoly position and empower the organisation to be even more unaccountable.
The licence fee is also staying despite Media Minister Catherine Martin indicating the model of paying for it through the general scheme of taxation had public support.
Our politicians are capitulating to RTÉ’s begging bowl because RTÉ give them a soft platform and never really challenge them on what they say, so it’s a case of one hand washing the other. This means nothing will change despite the scandals and cover-ups with confidentiality agreements which RTÉ say exist.
RTÉ appears to be royalty where the rules do not apply as they would ordinarily and our Government is nothing but a puppet on a string for the royals at Montrose.
Much has been made of Kamala Harris’ championing of reproductive rights. Perchance I’m mistaken but the right to reproduce is vastly different from the right to terminate, hence my puzzlement at the use of the term “reproductive rights”.
Would it not be more truthful and honest to call it “termination rights”?
It probably doesn’t sound as euphemistic and wholesome but isn’t that the problem with the truth?
The decision by the National Waxworks Museum to remove the newly unveiled wax figure of the late Sinéad O’Connor’s head is to be welcomed.
If photographs are an accurate representation then any resemblance to Sinéad, and especially her wonderful spirit, is more coincidental than anything else.
However, that head is a far better representation than many of those inflicted on the public space in recent years, particularly in Cork and Limerick.
Might those that fall a long way short of something like reality be removed and improved?
That may be unlikely but it would be a victory if the standards exercised in the Wax Museum were applied to all public sculpture from now on.
Belgium has just removed its mandatory waiting period for accessing abortion and raised the limit from 12 to 18 weeks. Why? Because people who couldn’t access abortion under Belgian law were travelling to the Netherlands instead and Belgium, like any modern, serious country, would prefer its citizens to receive healthcare in their own country.
As in Belgium, Ireland’s three-day waiting period is not only paternalistic, it unduly punishes the less well off, those vulnerable to domestic abuse, and rural dwellers.
In Ireland, raising the limit from 12 weeks to 18 weeks would first and foremost help those who receive the heartbreaking diagnosis of fatal fetal anomaly but also those who have been hampered in accessing abortion by poverty, location, personal circumstances, or the interference of rogue pregnancy agencies — which health minister Stephen Donnelly promised to, and has failed to, crack down on.
The Belgian experience shows that people who need abortions will get them, one way or another, exactly as we saw in Ireland when abortion was illegal.
All self-proclaimed pro-choice politicians such as Mr Donnelly, Simon Harris, and Micheál Martin can do is maintain or remove obstacles, make people’s lives easier or harder in a trying time.
As a Francophile I really enjoyed most of the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games in Paris which was live on TV on Friday.
Apart from the heavy rain, what really put a damper on the proceedings for me, though, was the gratuitous mock portrayal of the Last Supper, on which the Eucharistic ceremony is based. This is a Church sacrament held dear by Christians all over the world.
The overall message of the opening ceremony was the promotion of peace, harmony, and inclusion. How does the mocking of a sacred sacrament in the Christian church tie in with that theme?
Shame on the organisers for approving such an insult to people of a particular faith.
As an Irish Catholic I was rather bemused at a recent eulogy given by a local priest at Sunday Mass.
While his talk was primarily on the Eucharist, and those repentant enough to receive it, he premised this with his abhorrence at the depiction of the Last Supper by transvestites in Paris at the opening ceremony of the Olympics and also the refusal by a priest of the Eucharist to a TD who was part of the Government that held the abortion referendum.
While many of us would see the depiction of the Last Supper by trans people as abhorrent, and has nothing to do with the Olympics, there are others who see it as part of inclusivity in the wider sense. Though I am not convinced of the latter.
In relation to the priest who refused the eucharist to a TD, and excommunicated him, this was a warning shot across the bows to all Catholics, 1.4m to be exact, that they could be in the firing line.
As a divorcee, and one who hasn’t their marriage annulled by the church, I am in their eyes an unrepentant sinner and not entitled to receive the holy sacraments. Neither am I allowed to serve the holy Eucharist but would be welcome to be a collector of the Sunday stipend.
Given the restrictions placed on me, and many others like me all across the globe, how would the Catholic Church cope with, what is already known, falling attendance at Masses and reduced number of priests, if they were to exclude those of us who didn’t receive church annulments.
While I am happily married for the second time, and for many years, the Church and its dogma denies us the same rights that they didn’t deny serial abusers or those who covered up serial abuse within the Church and the mistreatment of its victims.
You can be a murderer, rapist, or even a serial abuser, and if you truly repent you can receive the sacraments or even become a Eucharistic minister, but if you are a divorcee without an annulment you’re denied.
As one priest told me, with whom I had a long conversation on many matters: “Them’s the rules.”
As the old saying goes: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
