Last Friday was a good day for me. I got to vote again. In fact, it was the third time I had voted this year (though two votes were on the same day, which somewhat lessens the total pleasure). Anyway, this time the vote was the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

On 12 June 2008 the Treaty was rejected in a referendum by 53.4% to 46.6%. Late last year, the government negotiated various concessions and clarifications. Another referendum was proposed and it was held last Friday.

This time there was a resounding ‘yes’ vote. The turnout was slightly higher this time. However, it seems as if a significant amount of people did simply switch their vote from ‘no’ to ‘yes’. Obviously, apart from any negotiated changes, the big difference this time around was the state of the economy, which is worse than lousy. There was definitely a fear that a ‘no’ vote would leave Ireland badly placed within the EU. One sign of this is that, this time, the farmers voted very strongly ‘yes’, whereas last time there had been a clear ‘no’ majority.

For the record, my constituency, Dublin South, had the highest ‘yes’ vote at (a veritably stalinist) 81.7%! Only 2/43 constituencies voted ‘no’, both in Donegal. The regional results are available here.

Here is the overall result:

Turnout: 58.0%
Yes: 67.1%
No: 32.9%

During the campaign, the ‘yes’ side feared that the government’s very low opinion poll ratings (around 20% support) would lead people to vote ‘no’ simply out of protest. This did not happen. So the government may be bolstered by the ‘yes’ vote. However, there is a very difficult budget looming, there is also a vote on the controversial agency that will manage the banks’ bad debts, and the government’s coalition partner, the Greens, are currently renegotiating their programme demands. If the Greens vote to leave the coalition, then government is unlikely to survive. So, while the next election is scheduled for 2012, there is still the possibility that it may occur much sooner.