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Referendum Comparisons
The Abortion referendum has just been lost by a margin of less than 1%. The proposal was an attempt to exclude suicide as grounds for abortion through a constitutional amendment. The "pro-life" campaign was split, with most supporting a Yes vote. Fianna Fáil supported it while Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens and Sinn Féin opposed it. There was a clear urban-rural divide in this referendum with the cities voting No and the rest of the country voting No. Every constituency in Dublin voted No along with both Kildare constituencies and Wicklow. The Cork city constituencies also voted No as did Limerick East, Galway West and Waterford which include the cities of Limerick, Galway and Waterford respectively. There was also a higher turnout in urban areas which helped the No side to win. However, it would be wrong to think that urban voters came out to vote against the proposal. If you plot the turnout in the Nice referendum against the turnout in the Abortion referendum you will see a very strong relationship between them. It appears that urban voters are simply more likely to vote in referendums, in contrast to general elections where the reverse is the norm. The following applet allows you to draw a graph by constituency of the results of this referendum against the results of the Nice treaty, Death penalty and International court referendums which occurred took place last year. On that occasion, the Nice treaty was defeated while the Death Penalty was abolished and the International Court approved. You can also compare the turnout by constituency on both occasions. Simply select the options you want to appear on the vertical and horizontal axes and the graph will be drawn automatically. You can select as many options as you want. A separate point is plotted on the graph for each constituency. For example, to compare the Yes vote in the Abortion referendum with the Yes vote for Nice, select the Vertical option for "Yes to Nice" and the Horizontal option for "Yes to Abortion Proposal". |
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