Wednesday 22 May 2002

So, it's almost a week since the General Election here in Ireland, and still we don't know the final outcome. While the general shape of the next Dáil is apparent insofar as the outgoing Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition government has been returned with an increased majority and Fine Gael (formerly the principal opposition party) have lost not only 20-something seats but several of their front-bench heavyweights, the eventual numerical composition of the Dáil is still dependent on the outcome of re-counts which are still proceeding in two constituencies.       For the first time in Irish electoral history, three constituencies voted electronically in this election and these results were known within hours of the close of voting. This caused its own problems, however. Television coverage certainly suffered, because the powers that be did not seem to have got their heads sufficiently together to decide the manner for announcing the results of the electronic calculations. There was some confusion at each of the counting centres, and no consistency in the way announcements were made. As a result it was all a bit of a damp squib.       By contrast, the remaining constituency counts produced some really exciting coverage and some knife-edge results. One of the recounts which is still proceeding was called because the final seat was decided by a margin of just 3 votes! The first recount reversed the otucome, this time by 2 votes the other way, and now the second recount is expected to produce a definitive result some time shortly (a full five days after voting closed). This is much, much more exciting, and seems to me to be a far better way to do things. The fact that a recount resulted in a swing of a mere 5 votes after several rounds of eliminations, and surplus distributions shows to me at least how little human error was involved, whereas I would be desperately concerned that blindly assuming the greater accuracy of a computer program is dangerous in the extreme.       All in all it has proved to be a quite extraordinary election. Not only did the so-called 'experts' (once again) get it terribly wrong with their polls and their pre-election predictions, but the extent to which they got it wrong was dramatic in the extreme. The Progressive Democrats, junior partners in the outgoing coalition, doubled their representation whereas they were expected to be annihilated; the Greens, Sinn Féin and a slew of Independents now number 25 (mostly at the expense of Fine Gael). The one thing everyone is agreed on with the benefit of hindsight is that the new Opposition will be very different indeed from the previous one. The next fve years should be very interesting! 10:24:29 PM  Your view

		© Copyright 2002 Jim MacCormaic . Last update: 29/09/2002; 06:02:55 am .