Over the course of the referendum I wrote several long pieces analysing opinion polls as they appeared in the newspapers to glean useful information about how the campaign for a Yes vote was doing, where we were stong, what weakenesses existed and what tactics this information suggested. I’ve gathered all these pieces together below in reverse order, the first has a lot of details on methodology and context that is not repeated in the later pieces.
The polls appear to have been very accurate in particular those carried out by Red C and also Behaviours and Attitude. Both companies showed likely results very close to the final outcome (66.4% Yes) if you presume the Yes campaign won most of the Don’t Knows over the 3 months between the start of serious campaigning around March 8th and the referendum in June.
Saturday March 10th saw an anti-choice march pass through Dublin, part of their campaign to try to maintain the status quo where pregnant people and doctors can be jailed for 14 years for taking abortion pills in this country while others are denied control of their own maternity care. Polls show that few people support this position and its ‘let women die’ implications so the anti-choice campaign is trying to create the fiction of mass support in the hope that people will be more inclined to vote No.
Saturday in Dublin saw another desperate attempt by the anti-choice coalition to prevent legislation coming to the Dail (Irish parliament) to allow abortion where a women’s life is under threat. Despite months of preparation, a spend that must have ran close to a million euro, and the parish priest at every mass in the country telling catholics they should attend, less than 15,000 turned up. Compared to the 150,000 women who have had to travel to obtain abortions in the last decades this amounts to almost nothing, a handful of bigots bussed in from all over the country. [I
Something in the region of 2000 people who demand that women in Ireland should have to carry to term unwanted pregnancies in any situation organised a demonstration at the Dail this evening (4th Dec). They were trying to prevent the government legislating for abortion in the very limited circumstances of the X-Case – some 20 years after the Supreme court told them such legislation was required.
Saturday 29 September saw thousands march through Dublin as part of the March for Choice and as usual I was there with my camera. I’d been part of the organising group for the event but my task for the day itself was photography, just as well as it turned out. The slideshow here is composed of some of my better pictures from the day, as usual you will find a very much larger collection in the