Almost half – 45% – of the people who spoiled their votes in the Presidential Election last year said they did not like any of the candidates, according to a survey.<\/p>\n
The Electoral Commission has published figures along with the National Election and Democracy Study, giving insight on voters and non-voters.<\/p>\n
Two candidates were in the running for president last November, after Fianna F\u00e1il candidate Jim Gavin withdrew.<\/p>\n
Mr Gavin beat MEP Billy Kelleher in a selection vote, but later dropped out of the race after it emerged that he owed a former tenant more than \u20ac3,000.<\/p>\n
Independent Catherine Connolly won 63% of first preference votes, defeating Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, who secured 29%.<\/p>\n
During the Presidential Election race, a campaign encouraging people to spoil their vote<\/a> was launched.<\/p>\n Nationally, and within the survey (of 1,312 respondents), 12% of people spoiled their votes.<\/p>\n 45% said it was because they did not like the candidates, 27% said the process of selecting candidates was unfair, and 17% said there was not enough choice.<\/p>\n 14% of people who spoiled their ballots said they saw it as a protest against Government policy, 7% said they preferred a candidate not on the ballot paper, and 6% said there was an “other” reason.<\/p>\n Respondents could give more than one reason.<\/p>\n The Electoral Commission welcomed the news that 97% of those who voted said they had a positive experience.<\/p>\n After the election, 84% of respondents agreed that elections are conducted in accordance with the law.<\/p>\n We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost half – 45% – of the people who spoiled their votes in the Presidential Election last year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-331606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}