A Majority of Well-off Middle Aged Men Voted Yes for Lisbon
Sep 11th, 2008 by Donagh
Of course that is not how the reports on the Government survey into the Lisbon vote published yesterday put it of course, but that is what we can conclude from this Irish Times article, which is an accurate summary of the Millward Brown IMS research:
The research confirmed that the biggest No vote came from the lower income group where 65 per cent voted against the treaty.
There was also a clear No majority among women with 56 per cent against, while in age terms, the highest No vote, 59 per cent, came from the 25 to 34-year-old category.
So, while it wasn’t absolute it would appear that those who were most likely to vote yes for Lisbon were middle aged men with good salaries, which speaks volumes about how the Treaty was presented and allows us to get to the root of why it was rejected.
It was bit like that 70’s kids TV show, Why Don’t You?, which was supposed to be made by the kids, for the kids (and of course it wasn’t, it was made by Russell T. Davies). The full title of the program was “Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead?”
However, the Lisbon Yes campaign could have been called “Why Don’t You Just Stop Worrying and Vote Yes for Lisbon and We’ll Take Care of the Details?”
Those who normally take care of the details were on board, and everyone else was alienated. One of the most significant reactions to the rejection, to call for the ratification of parts of the Lisbon Treaty through the Oireachtas rather than by referendum, which was made by Pat Cox following on from fellow PD fan Stephen Collin, was them basically saying, well we shouldn’t have bloody asked you in the first place.
The Government though are now at a loss, as they don’t have a suitable single objection to the treaty which would allow them to provide a simple fix to present to other EU heads of government. Although Martin has admitted that it failed to run an effective campaign, this is now going to be interpreted as poor communication.
As Stephen Collins reports:
“A total of 42 per cent of those who voted No cited a lack of information, knowledge or understanding of the treaty as the main reason for their decision, according to the poll.”
From my memory of the campaign there was an additional and more fundamental problem, an unwillingness or inability on the part of the Yes campaign to communicate the implications of what changes the Lisbon Treaty would bring. This, at least in part, was because some of those changes are unknown. Certainly the lack of understanding of how the EU works is an important point as well, and if people’s experience of the EU and its workings rarely impinges upon their life its inevitable that they do not feel comfortable making a decision that could have far reaching implications on the quality of that life. It is the nature of referenda the world over that, if in doubt, vote no. That way nothing changes, even if you are reassured by the elites that those changes will do you good.
As the survey indicates, a lot of the comment after the Lisbon vote which argued that the rejection indicated Ireland was moving away from the EU was clearly designed to reinforce the idea that rejection of Lisbon was a rejection of the EU, which heightened the sense of crisis. A sense of crisis, whether real or not, is a very useful tool for taking away the power given to the people in a referendum and keeping it in the hands of those who feel they can make better use of it.
Pat Cox remark in his Irish Times article on the 26th of August that…
the political terrain has been changed by the successful deployment in Ireland for a first time of an Irish homespun version of classic Tory British euroscepticism.
..can now be swiftly rejected for the false analysis that we have seen from politicians and commentators in the months following the rejection of Lisbon.
“70 per cent of people believed the EU was a good thing and 60 per cent thought Ireland’s interests were best pursued by remaining fully involved.”
This distrust in the ability of the electorate to do what is considered to be to the greater benefit of the country, without really telling them why, is considered necessary because of the electorate’s ‘distrust’ of politicians (something which the survey has not found to be the case at all).
But what is also significant about the survey is that even in the closing week of the campaign there remained an opportunity to still win over a majority to the Yes side.
On the Yes side 36% of the total turnout were convinced ‘Hard’ Yes voters, with a further 10% ‘Soft’ Yes voters. As a percentage of the total Yes vote this translates as 78% : 22%.
The picture on the No side is similar. Forty-one per cent of all votes cast were ‘Hard’ No’s with 13% ‘Soft’ No’s. As a percentage of the No vote a similar profile to the Yes side emerges at 76% : 24%.
The Soft electorate adds to 23% in total. However, it is worth noting that the “soft” vote on both the Yes and No side is likely to be under-estimated to some degree: the qualitative research and the spontaneous answers from the opinion poll both point towards this.
As I highlighted in my article Lisbon and Immigration: Why Ireland Voted No over on Irish Left Review, the Irish Times/MRBI poll published on the 6th of June indicated that the number of undecided voters amounted to 28%.
“The poll shows the number of people intending to vote No has almost doubled to 35 per cent (up 17 points) since the last poll three weeks ago, while the number of the Yes side has declined to 30 per cent (down 5 points).
The number of undecided voters is still a significant 28 per cent (down 12 points) while 7 per cent won’t vote.”
Is this a coincidence? Or was it still possible that all people needed was a good reason to vote yes and that the Yes campaign was unwilling or unable to provide it. Perhaps it was due to a lack of engagement with the EU in Irish public life. Perhaps there should be public seminars which employees are legally obliged to attend, public information films, maybe tying the EU and how it works into storylines in Fair City, or maybe even a bloggers convention or two, just to get more and more people interested.
I doubt that this, if it had been all available before the vote, would have made any difference. Politics, after all is local. Even when it pertains to national policy and governance people are more inclined to respond to it in local terms – how does this effect me and my local community, how will it change how I live, will it improve facilities and infrastructure that I use etc. When people respond to the EU they usually do so in terms that directly affect them, which is why the story about a new EU regulation banning the sale of cakes at local fairs was published by the Irish Times. It was newsy, in that it illustrated a way that the EU would control the fine detail of our local existence, never mind that it was completely false.
The irony is that, as Prof John Maguire argues in the Irish Times today, the vote was based on whether or not to overturn the popular sovereignty enshrined in the constitution and abdicate that right to a powerful organization that is even more centralized and more distant from them than their own government is.
The majority of people in Ireland believe that this powerful organization is for their greater good, but before they give it even more power over their lives they would like to know why. This illustrates, not ignorance, but intelligence as it is a rejection of the ‘faith-based’ politics that the high priests in the Dail and the media are trying to impose on us from above.
Russell T Davis made Why Don’t You…? That I didn’t know.
Neither did I. It was definitely the most interesting fact I unearthed while preparing the post.
Russell T. Davis did not come up with “Why Don´t You…” namely because he was ten when the series began in 1973. He did, however, work on the show in the 1990s, and was the final producer. The idea for the show was developed by the BBC, under the production of Molly Cox and Peter Charlton. Charlton also produced Play Away, while Molly Cox was involved in the development of Jackanory.
What the…? I didn’t say he came up with it. I said he made it, which he did sometime between 1973 and 1993 and I said ‘made’ because I was trying to be brief and to illustrate that the kids didn’t direct or produce WDY rather grown ups like Davis did. I suppose I should have copy and pasted the entry from wikipedia or perhaps concentrated more of the post on BBC Children’s television between 1972 to 1999 rather than banging on about Lisbon again. Jeez.
Ah great, I’ve started an internet kerfuffle about WDY. This could get out of hand really quickly. Please, nobody mention pigs and lipstick.
I believe the Pig Beauty Pagent organizers are up in arms over Obama’s comment. When he said that a pig with lipstick is still just a pig they said ‘no its not. It’s a beautiful pig’.
Sarah Palin has agreed to be their sponser. However, they had to agree that once the pagent was over, she gets to kill the pig.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/babysingsing/2184236781/
The irony is that, as Prof John Maguire argues in the Irish Times today, the vote was based on whether or not to overturn the popular sovereignty enshrined in the constitution and abdicate that right to a powerful organization that is even more centralized and more distant from them than their own government is.
One issue around the surrender of sovereignty in Lisbon is that there was no agreement on the amount of sovereignty that was being given to Europe. That’s no surprise. Sovereignty is not easy to quantify and so each side of the campaign took very different views of whether a large or small amount of sovereignty was to be transferred. But the idea of surrendering sovereignty per se is not necessarily negative. It can be of course. But isn’t necessarily so. You can imagine for example, transferring sovereignty to another centre of power because it might be more effective - in tackling issues which the local power, standing alone, is not capable of dealing with effectively. Local sovereignty in certain areas is not much use if you aren’t powerful to take decisions that make a difference.
But I think Prof Maguire’s point about over-ridding the will of the people is valid. While I personally see a certain amount of merit in having EU treaties ratified by parliament, I think that once the question was put to the people, it would be completely wrong to simply ignore their voice and press ahead with ratification in the Oireachtas. But I don’t think that is going to happen. I think the government is highly likely to get a few small concessions from our Eu partners and then put the question again. Regarding the clash between the people and their representatives regarding Lisbon, someone made the point that because it was an issue of major national importance, the government should have resigned and called another election. I see a certain logic in that but I’m not sure if would help resolve the problem. We’d likely have seen the same government returned, or at least the main party thereof, and so, I’m not sure if much would be achieved.
I don’t agree with your point that the No illustrated that the electorate was intelligent enough to reject what the political leadership was pushing. If they were that intelligent would they have put the same crowd back in power three times in a row? There are problems with Lisbon and provisions in it that merit solid debate before deciding. But is there any reason to doubt the findings that show an electorate which has a terribly poor knowledge of the Eu as it stands and which had great difficulty getting to grips with the proposed changes? And its certainly true that the political elite are not exactly inspiring either when it comes to their command of Eu affairs. This, in my opinion, is not the whole story by any means, but it is an important part of it.
Local sovereignty in certain areas is not much use if you aren’t powerful to take decisions that make a difference.
There has been suggestions that by not abdicating sovereignty to the EU that the Irish will remain under the greater control of a right wing, less progressive polity which is determined by the short term concerns of parish pump politics. That is, sectional interests with greater influence in a smaller geographical area controlling things in their favour, and we would lose out on the supranational checks and balances that sees things more in universal terms, and which increase social justice and provide greater equality for all the people of Europe. The things is, without trying to sound like a Euro skeptic Tory, or being accused of being one, how can we be sure that such a move would provide more progressive social and economic policies or protect us against sectional interests. What if that supranational body is just as likely to be influence by more powerful sectional interests? What if certain national interests within the EU dominate? Now in such circumstance Ireland would still probably benefit economically and indeed socially, but that would probably have more to do with the fact that we are coming from such a low base.
What the Lisbon situation has shown is not the problems with modern democracy, but how it highlights its very absence. Of course democracy at the local level is very limited at the moment. That is the nature of representative democracy. You stand in line every four years – depending on events - and choose what you think is the tastiest dish on the menu. How is that improved by abdicating power to an institution which reduces that democratic involvement even further?
We’d likely have seen the same government returned, or at least the main party thereof, and so, I’m not sure if much would be achieved.
What the survey has shown is what was known already, middle class and middle aged men not only have the greatest interest in national politics and are the greatest beneficiaries of how it works, they also run the show. People say that it’s terrible how the majority of people (the majority of workers, who live on less than 40k, women and the young) are disenfranchised from modern politics. That, I would say, is how the system is designed to work. Calling an election is not going to change that.
If they were that intelligent would they have put the same crowd back in power three times in a row?
I think I mentioned before that referenda are different to election cycles. One is to vote yes or no, but which will in no way influence what politicians will be in power, while the other is to try and determine who is in power. The intelligent point is that I thought it was better to make an informed decision rather than doing something because you are told to do it. If you can’t make an informed decision (leaving aside the fact that you should be informing yourself) then you should hold off on making it.
Despite all the information available about what the Lisbon Treaty was supposed to change in terms of structural reform, foreign policy and voting etc the full implications were still unclear. It clear that the middle class middle aged men thought that it would be beneficial to them, but the rest of the population could see how it would improve their lives any. And the reason why the politicians didn’t point this out was because it probably wouldn’t.
I see a certain logic in that but I’m not sure if would help resolve the problem. We’d likely have seen the same government returned, or at least the main party thereof, and so, I’m not sure if much would be achieved.
I do wish some people would understand that in a democracy the most important thing about a vote is not its outcome.
ejh,
The right to exercise a vote is vital. My point was that, with respect to the issue raised by prof maguire about the clash between the will of the people in choosing their government and their expressed will in the referendum, calling another election would hardly help. Lisbon plunged us into a political not a constitutional quandary.
I don’t recall where I promoted the abolition of the ballot or proposed a dictatorship. And by the way, I tend to think the outcome of a vote is rather important. If the outcome isn’t important the whole exercise becomes mechanical and pointless don’t you think.
Of course, you understood perfectly well what I meant. But, for whatever the reason, you are gripped by the same pathology as many who oppose Lisbon. Once infected the victim finds it impossible not to twist the words of those who differ in opinion. All kinds of extrapolations are possible, and there can be no limit to how arguments can be misconstrued.
What is it about Lisbon? It seems to provoke such an extraordinary response in those who oppose it. I often get the feeling there is something visceral, bordering on the viscious, behind the comments. Where does this come from?