President Higgins comes from the left of Irish politics. In US terms he'd be to the left of Bernie Sanders. There's really no equivalent place on the US political spectrum. He's pro-labour, pro-social-justice, pro-immigrant, to give one example ...
-
-
Again though, Robinson would be well to the left of Bernie Sanders. Though it's very hard to map Irish politics as left-right; the political alignments are much more nuanced and impacted by history.
Show this thread -
Oh Robinson was also a strong campaigner against the 8th amendment, which prohibited abortion and was recently appealed. She was against it *at the time*. This was not broadly popular.
Show this thread -
Big take-away: 30 years of Irish Presidents have been progressive in significant ways, supporters of the little guy, compassionate, and extremely popular in office.
Show this thread -
A not insignificant factor is how Irish elections work. We use a ranked system. This prevents "wasting" votes, discourages divisive two-partyism, and promotes broader sort of compromise position taking.
Show this thread -
Not one of those presidents was elected with a simple majority of first preference votes. Mary Robinson, widely regarded as our best president ever, didn't even a plurality of first preference votes!
Show this thread -
Instead they were elected based on "transfers": 2nd and 3rd preference votes from voters whose 1st and then 2nd choices were eliminated.
Show this thread -
We've had divisive candidates, Dana Scalon comes to mind, a former star (she sang for Ireland at the Eurovision) who ran on a platform of strong support for "traditional values". She got 2.9% of the vote.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.