Constituency orientation in Irish politics: video statements of the candidates in the Irish general election 2016

ABSTRACT

The constituency orientation of Irish politicians is a recurring topic in Irish political science. Its analysis has predominantly focused on TDs. This article uses a content analysis of candidate video statements in the 2016 general election in order to assess the strength of constituency orientation among Irish politicians. The results show a distinct geographical pattern, with a band of strong constituency orientation along the West coast extending into a corridor that reaches far into the East of the country. Differences between urban and rural areas and between centre and periphery shape this pattern, indicated by the weak constituency orientation in Dublin and Cork constituencies. Results also indicate differences between parties and some political statuses, while the gender of the candidates is of no relevance. Although the material does not permit a clear distinction between effects of political culture and short-term considerations, taken together the results indicate that localism in Irish politics matters, but in more complicated ways than usually depicted.

KEYWORDS:

• Constituency orientation
• political culture
• electoral candidates
• parties

Acknowledgements

The map that is displayed in the article was created using a dataset provided by the Ordnance Survey Ireland as open data under a Creative Commons License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). I would like to thank Pascal Goeke for advice on how to use this dataset. Furthermore, I am grateful to Annette Schnabel for suggestions regarding multivariate analysis. Finally, I thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a research fellowship of the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, in Denmark, funded by the Seventh Framework Programme of the EU [grant agreement number 609033] and Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond.