Alan O’Reilly is a political activist based in London.
In 2013 following the defeat of a referendum on abolishing the senate, Enda Kenny said the public had given his government a “wallop”. After the defeat of not one but two referendum propositions but to the people last week, Leo Varadkar said the government had received “two wallops”.
Last Friday, voters rejected two changes to the constitution on the same day. The amendments proposed changing language in the constitution around women and the family which is widely viewed as archaic.
Rather than simply deleting the language in the constitution, however, the government tried to update it. The first referendum proposed changing the definition of family to one based on marriage to one based on “durable relationships”; the second proposed removing language on a “women’s place in the home” and replacing with a broader definition about care.
For most of the campaign, polls suggested all was going well. Yet when the results were announced on Saturday, on 44 per cent turnout, the family amendment was rejected by 67.7 percent of voters. The proposed changes on care were defeated by an even greater margin, with 73.9 percent against – the greatest defeat of an amendment in Irish constitutional history.
In January I wrote about the referendums and campaigning for them:
“Defeat has generally occurred when voters are unclear as to the proposed benefits and support in the political system, while united, appears half-hearted. This often leads to a much lower turnout, which can lead to a position (already being advocated by opponents of the referendum) of vote no if you don’t know.”
So it proved. The same polls which suggested that the referendums were likely to pass by significant margins also showed there was a huge level of uncertainty among voters. In the end, that proved decisive.
On the one side, the Yes campaign was backed by all major political parties, all major trade unions and significant number of NGOs. By comparison the opposition, led by independent senators and smaller NGOs, was much smaller.
However, it managed to latch on to some very effective arguments. The first was that the Government was not clear how “durable relationship” would be defined, and what that could mean for families. It was also pointed out that this could have impacts on inheritance and other family rights, such as family reunification for immigrants.
As for care, many pointed out that in fact the referendum did not go far enough (a point acknowledged by many campaigners on the yes side).
Throughout the campaign voters complained of being unclear as to the impact of the referendums and the exact meaning of the wording. No campaigners coalesced around the message of vote no if you don’t know, and won.
In comparison, the Yes campaign seemed to struggle to put forward a compelling reason for yes. Voters consistently reported being unsure what they were being asked to vote on, and canvassers reported back that many households simply did not know it was happening.
The issues with the wording had been long flagged. However, the government were determined to hold the referendums on International Women’s Day. Yet any dividend from this seems very likely to have been heavily outweighed by the cost of rushing into the votes without ironing out the creases in the proposal.
Going into the last week, polls still showed a significant number in favour on both propositions. But rather than declining, undecideds seem to be rising as election day approached. Even so, there seemed to be widespread confidence that Yes would prevail, albeit that it might not be smooth sailing.
Beyond the text of the constitution, the sheer scale of the loss is significant in itself. This is a major defeat for the government.
In the short run, it will likely have little impact: while there will be lots of finger pointing, ultimately almost every political party supported the Yes campaign, so they all share in the failure.
But with an election looming, those parties now face a hard question: why is there such a disconnect between them and the Irish electorate? Was it simply a case of voters not liking these specific changes? Or does it point to a deeper alienation between the voters and Ireland’s political class?
The post Alan O’Reilly: A record defeat in two referendums poses hard questions for Ireland’s political parties appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Alan O’Reilly
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