A terrible Yes campaign. A murky No campaign. Social media went crazy for these referendums, terrified what it means for the next elections. And all ultimately meaningless. We saved two meaningless articles. Woohoo.
Another embarrassing result for this government. Even my most political friends and colleagues either hadn’t a clue about what was happening exactly or didn’t care. These are the types that listen to political podcasts and read newspapers from all over the world. The information campaign was disastrous. The few people that knew a little all agreed they were going for yes/no.
Nobody trusts this government and it’s a problem. Sadly for them they cant get in coalition with a different type of vote to give the people what they don’t want like they’re used to
Apart from not changing the language of the constitution, what impact will a No result have going forward?
Not a bit surprised, I predicted this months ago.
I don’t think the result is fully about what the referendums were about, I think a lot of people just wanted to give the government a bloody nose because of other issues like housing, immigration etc.
And these referendums weren’t clear easy to understand issues like marriage equality or abortion, they were rather vague.
The message from government seemed to be that they were fairly minor inconsequential issues, so if you were in the mood to give two fingers to the ‘establishment’, it was very tempting to vote no.
In b4 Leo and the rest blame Russian Interference or AI misinformation instead of themselves for a terribly run referendum.
The early tallies are quite heavily no in area where you would (blandly) assume Yes would do well like Dublin Bay South-Care looks like a landslide defeat at this stage but there’s a very, very slim chance Family could scrape it
The public chose not to reward the government for their poor effort.
What a ridiculous waste of public money. Time for a general election.
What this whole referendum has shown was that the government failed massively on a PR platform but even with that they didn’t even need to do PR considering Labour were doing it for them. It boggles my mind how hard they went for yes/yes whereas nearing voting day, most of the other opposition parties who did advocate yes/yes could see the division this was causing and kept quiet leading up to it.
Genuinely confuses me why Labour just ran with it so confidently. And the snark and smugness from some of their members towards others not voting their way was a bit disgusting as well.
Wonder if this will haunt them heading into the elections
Now we have to look forward to “analysis” pieces from The Guardian et al trying to frame this as evidence of some sort of revitalised Conservative Catholic fifth column, emboldened by the Far Right
This is what they get for holding them on international women’s day. Had they held them with the European and local elections turnout would have been way higher and that might have influenced the result.
Embarrassing result.
That in itself wouldn’t be enough to collapse a government…
HOWEVER, given they actively concealed damaging Attorney General advice and the revelations that they contradicted and misrepresented what that advice was, can they actually govern with any credibility?
I think the problem is that most people were Yes to changing the current wording, but a lot of people were very unsure or against the new wording that replaced it.
It didn’t help that half the Yes campaign people were like “yes I agree the new wording isn’t great BUT…”
I think, if this is a No/No, it was lost because of the poor wording of the replacement texts.
The reason most people I know who voted no was the wording on these changes was way too vague ..The idea around the amendments is ok but as usual our government are a bit useless
Voted Yes/No myself, specifically because of the shadeyness around the Care referendum all throughout the campaign, by the govt.
Varadkars remarks this week we’re downright disgusting too.
I’d be generally “centrist dad” politically, voted for abortion and gay marriage, but I didn’t believe the govt were being honest on this one, so couldn’t vote for change
No doubt there will be countless claims about the far right influence etc. Nobody really knew what they were voting for, it was one of the worst run referendums ever. Outcome is not surprising.
Great news.
Fuck all the people on here that were calling people hillbillies and backwards for even considering voting no.
How much money was wasted on this? Tens of millions no doubt.
Hilarious how bad the government is at referendums. Lucky they waited so long for the abortion and gay marriage ones because if it was 50/50 they would have dropped the ball.
Just a thought. Why should the government propose referendum texts?
Should we move to something where the citizens assemblies decide the texts with legal advice and they are put to the public there and then.
The problem with the system seems to be that the government move the referendums. Maybe a more direct approach like in Switzerland is better.
Note: I’m not sure how that works there in terms of drafting the actual texts.
Two things have swung it in my head.
1. Piss poor wording and information. There was a flurry of stuff pushed out in the last 7 to 10 days but every constitutional referendum deserves proper attention like the marriage equality and abortion referenda received.
2. Age profile of voters. The apathy towards these referenda had to be seen to be believed. Young people, frankly, did not care. The older voters who have showed up are bound to say No/No due to a combination of Conservative leaning and also lack of understanding leading to a No/No.
I voted No No simply because the campaign by government has been so sloppy all the while the Law Society has been very luke warm about it.
The idea behind what was asked was good but they half asked the fuck out if it. Couldn’t have done a worse job if they tried.
A referendum to put into our constitution words that say the government that have and are continuing to destroy the country would “strive to support” anyone is useless.
Unless they’ve just not been trying at all up to now?
Nice. Less ambiguous questions in future please.
“When in doubt, vote no” And there was a whole lot of doubt around these changes.
I agree with the general aim of the changes, but how they were laid out was too muddy for constitutional change.
The gay marriage and abortion amendments were clear and concise, you knew exactly what would happen in the event of a yes vote. With these two proposed amendments, it was just too hard to figure out what might happen if they passed.
As a carer that means a lot to me, because I feel the way the amendments were worded could allow the government to reduce supports for people like me and my family. That’s not just my opinion, a lot of the carers organizations I have dealt with have offered similar viewpoints.
I do support taking out the sexist language and redefining what a family is, but I’m only willing to do that if there is an assured net positive as a result of the new wording. I don’t think that’s the case with these proposed changes.
I also strongly suspect these referenda have a lot to do with that lady who’s taking a supreme court challenge against the government for denying her cares allowance because her husband eatned a bit too much.
It was a badly written amendment proposal. No surprise it fell flat.
This is on Leo 100%. The wording was a total fudge.
It should’ve been a resounding Yes in both votes but rather than accept the advice of the citizens’ assembly they demonstrated a blatant disregard for the collective electorate’s ability to interpret the questions.
Pretty obvious it’s due to a poor turnout, terrible wording, and just general confusion. The right wingers are going to be insufferable now.
This whole thing has been a complete and utter waste of time and money.
Of all the major issues facing the country, this is certainly not one of them.
A damning indictment of the Electoral Commission.
A piss poor information campaign that started too late. Most people I spoke to about it (I agree that’s a small sample size) didn’t know why they should bother voting yes and if they did what real effect it might have.
The government were looking for a quick win before elections
in many previous referendums, government took a long time, with deep, extensive and well organised campaigns to ensure that everyone knew exactly what they were voting on. regardless of the merits of these amendments, I can’t help but think that voters were correct to be suspicious of what seemed like rushed and poorly thought out proposals.
Vague and unnecessary is my take on it.
The government’s disrespect of the electorate throughout has been staggering. Rushed wording, Citizens’ Assembly ignored, not even printing the customary RefCom booklet you’re supposed to receive in the post..! Amach.
I’m sad this was so messed up. I hate the misogyny in the constitution but the fact the new wording seemed to lessen obligations of the state re: care and Leo getting up on an interview and saying care isn’t the responsibility of the state fucked things up. They should have just deleted that part or replaced “women” with “parents”
They were poor changes that had no real effect beyond the symbolic. They were rushed through so it could be held on International Women’s Day. This referendum was virtue signalling in all it’s finest.
But that aside, there was no indication from the government of what they intended after a Yes until Leo’s comments about care not being the state’s responsibility were circulated. We knew what the divorce referendum meant. We knew what the Good Friday referendum meant. We knew what the abortion and same sex marriage referenda meant.
This was a foreseeable failure by the government and they should be ashamed.
Hurray!
I find it vary hard to accept all the moaning and griping from the armchair experts and keyboard warriors who did not exercise their right to vote.
If you did not have a legitimate reason not to vote and/or chose not to bother educating yourself on the matters at hand, hang your head. That’s on you, not the government.
Voting means playing an active part in our democracy, however you choose to vote and what motivates your vote is entirely up to you. At least you will be doing your bit as a good citizen by acting.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I couldn’t vote. But I’d have voted no in relation to the Care referendum purely on the basis of the removal of Article 41.2.2° “The State shall, therefore, *endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home*.””
This isn’t adequately captured in the amendment wording and opens the door to abuse imo
We could have built 5 new schools with the money it took to run this….
It was fairly obvious that this would happen. It’s a complicated amendment, the water was muddied – it should have just been deleted.
It’s an excessively patronising and paternalistic throwback to the 1930s and didn’t need to be in the constitution at all.
All that they did was make it vague and confusing – added potential legal issues that we didn’t need to add and created a wide open space for all sorts of conspiracy theories too.
Meanwhile the government and most of the parties made no effort to communicate and a bubble of online political nerds thought there was a national debate – there wasn’t.
I said yesterday on here that several of my colleagues didn’t even know there was a referendum on, and I just got a ton of downvotes.
I would add they did similar with the Seanad reforms – mess of a process and also with the mayoral plebiscite – nobody had a clue what they were about in Cork as there had been no engagement with a debate.
It’s a lesson in why not to call referenda without proper communication and engagement, and why not to present vague, over complicated proposals that require a yes/no response. The electorate responds by retaining the status quo rather than leaps into the unknown.
So now the global news will be Ireland is a conservative backwater because of an over complicated referendum.
Well done lads – ye couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
42 comments
A terrible Yes campaign. A murky No campaign. Social media went crazy for these referendums, terrified what it means for the next elections. And all ultimately meaningless. We saved two meaningless articles. Woohoo.
Another embarrassing result for this government. Even my most political friends and colleagues either hadn’t a clue about what was happening exactly or didn’t care. These are the types that listen to political podcasts and read newspapers from all over the world. The information campaign was disastrous. The few people that knew a little all agreed they were going for yes/no.
Nobody trusts this government and it’s a problem. Sadly for them they cant get in coalition with a different type of vote to give the people what they don’t want like they’re used to
Apart from not changing the language of the constitution, what impact will a No result have going forward?
Not a bit surprised, I predicted this months ago.
I don’t think the result is fully about what the referendums were about, I think a lot of people just wanted to give the government a bloody nose because of other issues like housing, immigration etc.
And these referendums weren’t clear easy to understand issues like marriage equality or abortion, they were rather vague.
The message from government seemed to be that they were fairly minor inconsequential issues, so if you were in the mood to give two fingers to the ‘establishment’, it was very tempting to vote no.
In b4 Leo and the rest blame Russian Interference or AI misinformation instead of themselves for a terribly run referendum.
The early tallies are quite heavily no in area where you would (blandly) assume Yes would do well like Dublin Bay South-Care looks like a landslide defeat at this stage but there’s a very, very slim chance Family could scrape it
The public chose not to reward the government for their poor effort.
What a ridiculous waste of public money. Time for a general election.
What this whole referendum has shown was that the government failed massively on a PR platform but even with that they didn’t even need to do PR considering Labour were doing it for them. It boggles my mind how hard they went for yes/yes whereas nearing voting day, most of the other opposition parties who did advocate yes/yes could see the division this was causing and kept quiet leading up to it.
Genuinely confuses me why Labour just ran with it so confidently. And the snark and smugness from some of their members towards others not voting their way was a bit disgusting as well.
Wonder if this will haunt them heading into the elections
Now we have to look forward to “analysis” pieces from The Guardian et al trying to frame this as evidence of some sort of revitalised Conservative Catholic fifth column, emboldened by the Far Right
This is what they get for holding them on international women’s day. Had they held them with the European and local elections turnout would have been way higher and that might have influenced the result.
Embarrassing result.
That in itself wouldn’t be enough to collapse a government…
HOWEVER, given they actively concealed damaging Attorney General advice and the revelations that they contradicted and misrepresented what that advice was, can they actually govern with any credibility?
I think the problem is that most people were Yes to changing the current wording, but a lot of people were very unsure or against the new wording that replaced it.
It didn’t help that half the Yes campaign people were like “yes I agree the new wording isn’t great BUT…”
I think, if this is a No/No, it was lost because of the poor wording of the replacement texts.
The reason most people I know who voted no was the wording on these changes was way too vague ..The idea around the amendments is ok but as usual our government are a bit useless
Voted Yes/No myself, specifically because of the shadeyness around the Care referendum all throughout the campaign, by the govt.
Varadkars remarks this week we’re downright disgusting too.
I’d be generally “centrist dad” politically, voted for abortion and gay marriage, but I didn’t believe the govt were being honest on this one, so couldn’t vote for change
No doubt there will be countless claims about the far right influence etc. Nobody really knew what they were voting for, it was one of the worst run referendums ever. Outcome is not surprising.
Great news.
Fuck all the people on here that were calling people hillbillies and backwards for even considering voting no.
How much money was wasted on this? Tens of millions no doubt.
Hilarious how bad the government is at referendums. Lucky they waited so long for the abortion and gay marriage ones because if it was 50/50 they would have dropped the ball.
Just a thought. Why should the government propose referendum texts?
Should we move to something where the citizens assemblies decide the texts with legal advice and they are put to the public there and then.
The problem with the system seems to be that the government move the referendums. Maybe a more direct approach like in Switzerland is better.
Note: I’m not sure how that works there in terms of drafting the actual texts.
Two things have swung it in my head.
1. Piss poor wording and information. There was a flurry of stuff pushed out in the last 7 to 10 days but every constitutional referendum deserves proper attention like the marriage equality and abortion referenda received.
2. Age profile of voters. The apathy towards these referenda had to be seen to be believed. Young people, frankly, did not care. The older voters who have showed up are bound to say No/No due to a combination of Conservative leaning and also lack of understanding leading to a No/No.
I voted No No simply because the campaign by government has been so sloppy all the while the Law Society has been very luke warm about it.
The idea behind what was asked was good but they half asked the fuck out if it. Couldn’t have done a worse job if they tried.
A referendum to put into our constitution words that say the government that have and are continuing to destroy the country would “strive to support” anyone is useless.
Unless they’ve just not been trying at all up to now?
Nice. Less ambiguous questions in future please.
“When in doubt, vote no” And there was a whole lot of doubt around these changes.
I agree with the general aim of the changes, but how they were laid out was too muddy for constitutional change.
The gay marriage and abortion amendments were clear and concise, you knew exactly what would happen in the event of a yes vote. With these two proposed amendments, it was just too hard to figure out what might happen if they passed.
As a carer that means a lot to me, because I feel the way the amendments were worded could allow the government to reduce supports for people like me and my family. That’s not just my opinion, a lot of the carers organizations I have dealt with have offered similar viewpoints.
I do support taking out the sexist language and redefining what a family is, but I’m only willing to do that if there is an assured net positive as a result of the new wording. I don’t think that’s the case with these proposed changes.
I also strongly suspect these referenda have a lot to do with that lady who’s taking a supreme court challenge against the government for denying her cares allowance because her husband eatned a bit too much.
It was a badly written amendment proposal. No surprise it fell flat.
This is on Leo 100%. The wording was a total fudge.
It should’ve been a resounding Yes in both votes but rather than accept the advice of the citizens’ assembly they demonstrated a blatant disregard for the collective electorate’s ability to interpret the questions.
Pretty obvious it’s due to a poor turnout, terrible wording, and just general confusion. The right wingers are going to be insufferable now.
This whole thing has been a complete and utter waste of time and money.
Of all the major issues facing the country, this is certainly not one of them.
A damning indictment of the Electoral Commission.
A piss poor information campaign that started too late. Most people I spoke to about it (I agree that’s a small sample size) didn’t know why they should bother voting yes and if they did what real effect it might have.
The government were looking for a quick win before elections
in many previous referendums, government took a long time, with deep, extensive and well organised campaigns to ensure that everyone knew exactly what they were voting on. regardless of the merits of these amendments, I can’t help but think that voters were correct to be suspicious of what seemed like rushed and poorly thought out proposals.
Vague and unnecessary is my take on it.
The government’s disrespect of the electorate throughout has been staggering. Rushed wording, Citizens’ Assembly ignored, not even printing the customary RefCom booklet you’re supposed to receive in the post..! Amach.
I’m sad this was so messed up. I hate the misogyny in the constitution but the fact the new wording seemed to lessen obligations of the state re: care and Leo getting up on an interview and saying care isn’t the responsibility of the state fucked things up. They should have just deleted that part or replaced “women” with “parents”
They were poor changes that had no real effect beyond the symbolic. They were rushed through so it could be held on International Women’s Day. This referendum was virtue signalling in all it’s finest.
But that aside, there was no indication from the government of what they intended after a Yes until Leo’s comments about care not being the state’s responsibility were circulated. We knew what the divorce referendum meant. We knew what the Good Friday referendum meant. We knew what the abortion and same sex marriage referenda meant.
This was a foreseeable failure by the government and they should be ashamed.
Hurray!
I find it vary hard to accept all the moaning and griping from the armchair experts and keyboard warriors who did not exercise their right to vote.
If you did not have a legitimate reason not to vote and/or chose not to bother educating yourself on the matters at hand, hang your head. That’s on you, not the government.
Voting means playing an active part in our democracy, however you choose to vote and what motivates your vote is entirely up to you. At least you will be doing your bit as a good citizen by acting.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I couldn’t vote. But I’d have voted no in relation to the Care referendum purely on the basis of the removal of Article 41.2.2° “The State shall, therefore, *endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home*.””
This isn’t adequately captured in the amendment wording and opens the door to abuse imo
We could have built 5 new schools with the money it took to run this….
It was fairly obvious that this would happen. It’s a complicated amendment, the water was muddied – it should have just been deleted.
It’s an excessively patronising and paternalistic throwback to the 1930s and didn’t need to be in the constitution at all.
All that they did was make it vague and confusing – added potential legal issues that we didn’t need to add and created a wide open space for all sorts of conspiracy theories too.
Meanwhile the government and most of the parties made no effort to communicate and a bubble of online political nerds thought there was a national debate – there wasn’t.
I said yesterday on here that several of my colleagues didn’t even know there was a referendum on, and I just got a ton of downvotes.
I would add they did similar with the Seanad reforms – mess of a process and also with the mayoral plebiscite – nobody had a clue what they were about in Cork as there had been no engagement with a debate.
It’s a lesson in why not to call referenda without proper communication and engagement, and why not to present vague, over complicated proposals that require a yes/no response. The electorate responds by retaining the status quo rather than leaps into the unknown.
So now the global news will be Ireland is a conservative backwater because of an over complicated referendum.
Well done lads – ye couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.