Dublin Opinion

Remember all of that stuff last week about the initial findings of the Eurobarometer report, as reported in the Irish Independent and a day later in the Irish Times and how it was so significantly wrong, especially when compared to the actual Eurobarometer report which was published last Friday?

On the day after the Irish Independent reported on it, and suggested that fears about immigration featured strongly, Conor contacted the European Commission to see if they were the source for the newspaper articles. They wrote back denying that they were the source.

Here’s what the Irish Independent wrote:

The poll of 2,000 voters found:
- Young people voted ‘No’ by a margin of two to one.
- The vast majority of women voted ‘No’.
- A large number of people who do not vote in general elections voted.
- People who did not understand the treaty voted ‘No’.
- The huge influx of immigrants into the country was a factor in the ‘No’ vote.
- More than 70pc of ‘No’ voters thought a second treaty would be negotiated.

The Irish Times report seemed to be from the same sources, but this is what it reported:

When asked to give a single reason for voting No, 40 per cent of people replied that they didn’t understand the treaty. A fifth of respondents said they voted No to protect Irish identity while 17 per cent of respondents said they didn’t trust politicians or Government policies.

Other reasons cited for voting No were: to protect Irish neutrality (10 per cent); to keep an Irish EU commissioner (10 per cent); and to protect the tax system (8 per cent).

A majority of women voted No while most men voted Yes.

Young people between the age of 15 and 29 voted against the treaty by a factor of two to one, a finding that is labelled as “very serious” in an explanation of the referendum result prepared for commission president José Manuel Barroso. The explanation concludes that those on the No side in the referendum campaign saw little negative consequences arising from their vote.

“It’s almost risk-free,” notes the paper, which cautions that the results of the survey are compiled from early data.

Actually, the (London) Times also had the same report.

However, the Open Europe blog has a copy of the original paper that the Irish Times, Independent and Times had seen.

Notice the errors repeated verbatim by the Irish Times. As far as I know 15 – 17 year olds do not have the vote and the tally of percentages comes to 105%, as pointed out by Conor.

According to the OE, this ‘paper’ was ‘pushed around by the Commission’ and leaked to journalist before the Summit on Thursday. The significant difference is that the main reason given in the paper is that 40% of No voters didn’t understand the treaty, putting the blame for the negative vote squarely at the feet of the stupid/lazy electorate. This, of course, formed the basis of much of the commentary last week.

The figure in the official Eurobarometer report for those who didn’t understand the treaty dropped to 22%.

However, it seems that according to Flash Eurobarometer report immigration was only of interest to 1% of those who voted No, and you have to wonder why the Irish Independent made that bit up as its not in the initial paper supplied by a ‘source’ in the European commission. Also, despite the publication of the report on Friday afternoon, Noel Whelan in the IT’s on Saturday was still suggesting that it was a significant factor.

Also on Saturday Damian Loscher, managing director of TNS mrbi provided an interesting analysis of why the vote went the way it did:

When the Government and business leaders appeared themselves to be unfamiliar with the treaty, or could not explain how Ireland would benefit, voters became suspicious. And when appeals to vote Yes turned to threats, suspicion turned to resentment.

The electorate were being told what to do. Voters were spooked. Not that it would have taken much to spook them. They may not have been up to speed with the contents of the treaty, but they were all too aware that Ireland was the only country voting on Lisbon.

But this still only touches upon the surface of why Ireland voted the way it did.

For a much deeper analysis you have to go to Chekov’s review of the Lisbon Referendum on Irish Left Review.

Good as it is, its highly unlikely to be the last word.

Thanks to Irish Election for the Open Europe link.