RTE: "Poll suggests Heather Humphreys leading Presidential race" - totally misleading.

I was going to comment that if Pearse wins, he'll be the first immigrant to be President of Ireland - but then I remembered that Eddie Coll (or Edward De Valera as he later called himself) was born in the USA!
 
Marsupial said:
I was going to comment that if Pearse wins, he'll be the first immigrant to be President of Ireland - but then I remembered that Eddie Coll (or Edward De Valera as he later called himself) was born in the USA!
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Coll was his mothers maiden name. Eddie was a childhood nickname. He was George de Valero on his birth cert, changed his name to Éamon de Valera as a young man, and was called Edward when attending Blackrock College (on a scholarship). He was born in a home for orphans and destitute children and shipped off to Limerick when he was 2. The worst black mark on his record is that he played Rugby for Munster. Thankfully none of the current candidates have stooped so low.
 
Purple said:
Coll was his mothers maiden name. Eddie was a childhood nickname. He was George de Valero on his birth cert, changed his name to Éamon de Valera as a young man, and was called Edward when attending Blackrock College (on a scholarship). He was born in a home for orphans and destitute children and shipped off to Limerick when he was 2. The worst black mark on his record is that he played Rugby for Munster. Thankfully none of the current candidates have stooped so low.
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Someone has been watching RTE. Good documentary in fairness.

In regards the poll, it's an easy and cheap news story to create. The fact that we are talking about it here shows it worked.

Gareth whats his name, even if he gets 2 more councils wont get it. It's all down to what the Shinners do next and if Mary Lou, Gerry or Pearse are put forward. I think the other parties are holding fire on Catherine Connolly until the know what Sinn Fein will do. Given her track record with the Wexford builder, Syria etc, it could backfire on Sinn Fein. Pearse Doherty would be a credible candidate but does he want the Aras or Mary Lou's job, assuming of course he is given a choice in the decision to run or not?.
 
Peanuts20 said:
Gareth whats his name, even if he gets 2 more councils wont get it
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Garath Will take a lot of first preferance votes away from Jim and Heather, votes for Garath will be slow to transfer to jim seeing FF are trying there best to stop him from running Jim is not up to speed on how to play this Game,
on the other hand FG are up to speed and are helping him to get on the ticket and will benefit from transfers from his supporters,
 
Peanuts20 said:
Someone has been watching RTE. Good documentary in fairness.
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Have it recorded on my Sky box - thanls for the recommendation. It's been put together by Dr. David McWilliams (IIRC) so should be both reliable and watchable.
 
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Brendan Burgess said:
What a totally misleading headline!

I assumed from the headline that they had asked people which of the three Presidential candidates they were voting for.

But the poll also included Mary Lou McDonald and Billy Kelleher , neither of whom are running, so the poll is totally out of date.
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You may be a little hard on the pollsters, I think.

That’s a Red C poll (on the state of the parties), which Red C do every month. They took a break for the summer and that’s the first one since.
It made sense for Red C to do research on the Presidential picture, when doing the party poll.

If you look at the detail of the poll (on Red C website or Business Post), Red C also did a poll excluding BK (just JG for FF) and what was of interest is that JG only got 3% of BK’s 7%. (That may not have been explained in the RTE article).

Also, the poll shows Presidential candidate support v party support – HH is 4% above FG support; MMcD is nearly on a par with SF and CC seems to have all the leftish vote.

MMcD on 20% is interesting given that CC is below her on 17% and a lot of the CC transfers would tend to go to MMcD. You'd wonder why SF HQ didn’t ensure that she ran because on these figures, she had a chance.

So I thought that was quite an interesting poll.

It wouldn’t make sense to have a poll for a party candidate eg a ‘SF candidate’ - MMcD would poll better than other SF candidates – a bit ahead of Doherty, I expect, who is now getting mentioned (he was ploughing!)
A long way to go yet, and a few more opinion polls before the day but, at the moment, it looks like the final two should be JG or HH versus SF or CC and JG/HH transfers would elect the other.

Steen getting on the ballot paper would alter the first preferences more so than Sheridan, imho, and make it more intriguing.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I had missed this. Michael McDowell would make an excellent president but I think he has ruled himself out.
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I wonder would he have managed to cobble together the necessary 20 votes from Oireachtas members, assuming that FF and FG members wouldn't have been allowed to nominate him.
 
bkenn14 said:
What about Douglas Hide and the first few Irish Presidents,
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Douglas Hyde was born in Castlerea.
Seán T. O'Kelly was born in Dublin.

W.T. Cosgrave was the first President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State so he can also be described as the first President. He was born in Dublin.
 
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Purple said:
Douglas Hyde was born in Castlerea.
Seán T. O'Kelly was born in Dublin.

W.T. Cosgrave was the first President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State so he can also be described as the first President. He was born in
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Born under British rule,
 
Purple said:
Good point; both born British subjects.
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We are splitting hairs at this stage,
To be honest i ;)was expecting you to say Dublin and Roscommon are no longer under British rule, you know we like to give you a chance to score a few points hear and there,
 
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