I love a good poll, don’t you? Today’s was a pretty spicy one, we’re now looking at surprising leads emerging in races that were tied at the last poll, while other candidates consolidate their lead and the welfare race tightens around Louisa Miller. The University Times is forecasting stormy weather on the campaign trail for the next week. With Hustings on Monday and a weekend of reflection and planning ahead, next week should be similarly spicy. But how is this week rounding up?
Ents:
Definitely the most interesting race of the day, Ents has hit nine on the tension scale in the last 24 hours. Both candidates were out in full force today trying to mop up votes and make their presence felt. This was a race that was positively neck and neck in the last poll, with Elaine just doing enough to edge ahead of Chris by roughly 2%. Well, I can safely say that in the last two days Elaine has done more than enough to push ahead of Chris by a significant margin; not for a lack effort on Chris’ part, I might add. We’re now looking at Elaine sprinting ahead of Chris to take 52% of the vote with Chris watching from behind with 33%. It’s not an absolutely enormous margin, but for a race that we thought might be stuck at stalemate right to the end, it’s an interesting turn of events. The stunts that Elaine pulled off yesterday coupled with the presence of her massive team of campaigners in the Hamilton and Arts Block yesterday have clearly paid off. However, it’s not just the stunts that have put her in front. If students were just paying attention to the stunts then they would have paid equal attention to Chris’ arts block stunt (details below) and his videos on www.coc4ents.com. So something else is at play here. Her performance in the University Times’ Ents video debate may have swayed some students. One student who commented on the video referred to it as a “KO” for McDaid. I’m inclined to disagree that it’s a knock-out blow. I think this play still has an unwritten scene or two. The next poll will be crucial.
Yesterday Elaine began asking people to post what they wanted from their Ents nights on a board at her campaign stand in the Hamilton and Arts Block. Suggestions ranged from naked days once a week to BYOB nights, the latter, Elaine felt deserved a shot. Showing that her plan for “Collaborative Ents” will generate ideas for nights that are for students, by students, the Mezz will be holding a BYOB night next Tuesday. Elaine believes this will assure students that her policies are plausible and effective and that she is the one to enact what students want.
However, Chris is clearly not a man to mess with when it comes to proving himself. We have given him a lot of trouble over promises that he may not be able to fill but today he did something that almost feels like a response to our criticisms. As of 6 o’clock tonight there were, as promised, 4 euro naggins available at Probus Off Licence on Pearse St and Deveney’s in Rathmines, the Halls local off-licence. While CO’C is awaiting confirmation from the EC as to the viability of the policy he wanted to prove that he could do in the first place. The “€4 Naggin” Facebook page went live this evening and as of 9:30 it had 141 “likes.” Electoral commission sources have told us that the, “page won’t be up for long.” Indeed, the profile picture of the page has changed from the COC for Ents logo to a simple heart picture. On the subject of campaign promises, Elaine sent us evidence of communication between her and a travel agency who are willing to accommodate her European mystery tour, a coach tour costing £219 sterling per person. We know the location but we don’t want to ruin the surprise.
Elaine also came out fighting on COC’s promise to have a 40ft screen outside the Pav. She says she has looked into it herself and according to her “a 40ft screen, not including the support frame or insurance would cost minimum 11,000e.” and promised exact details tomorrow. She also cited an “alternative of two smaller screens with headphones which would actually be a viable alternative.”
But it wouldn’t be a normal day in the office if there wasn’t some sort of scandal in the Ents race. Last night, Elaine was physically and verbally assaulted on a bus back into town from halls where she was canvassing. She was set upon by five young men, all Trinity students who, according to Elaine, screamed “CO’C for Ents” in her face at very close range while pushing her around. Louisa Miller, who happened to be on the bus at the time, escorted the tearful Elaine back to Trinity. Education Officer Jen Fox and Welfare Officer Steph Fleming reported the incident to the Junior Dean today. This kind of behavior seems to be symptomatic of the tension and malaise that has been building in this race over the last few days with bitchy Facebook posts aplenty from both sides – although, that said, there is no indication that the five involved were members of COC’s campaign team and COC himself has come out to say that he doesn’t condone their behaviour. Steph Fleming got in touch with us in UTHQ to appeal to the candidates to try to keep their supporters civil. These guys need to chill out and remind their teams to do the same. A little bit of advice from Sammy L below.
Presidency:
The other interesting poll result comes in the presidential race. Aaron Heffernan has taken the lead over perceived odds-on favourite, Ryan Bartlett. I made the prediction after the last poll that Aaron would turn his 2% deficit into a poll victory by the end of the week. So, I’m not surprised that Aaron has taken the lead but I am positively astounded by the margin of the over-take. I thought he might push to 2% or 3% above Bartlett but he has overtaken his rival by 15%. With just over half the votes in our sample of 428 students, Aaron has pushed Bartlett into second place at 37%, and LeCocq into last place with a tiny 7.2% of the overall vote. Things are looking good for Mr Heffernan and his campaign team. Eimhear Breen, a JF Political Science and Geography student said she was impressed with the campaigns: “So far, I think the campaign is brilliant, it has made college more exciting over the last few days. I have been following Aaron’s campaign and think it is by far the best. Sebastien’s campaign does lack originality”. Matt Smyth, Aaron’s campaign manager made the statement that, “Mr Heffernan’s question at the beginning of the race ‘where are all the white women at?’ has truly been answered.” If Aaron continues to attract voters like this we may have an interesting situation on our hands.
Today was a fairly quiet day in this race. In fact, it’s starting to look like the all the candidates are winding down in anticipation of the weekend. Fatigue is setting in across every race and some of the initial vigor of the election campaign has began to decline. Ryan Bartlett held a stunt today outside the Hamilton and also the Arts Block entrance, himself and his campaigners danced to the song based on The Titans, “Everywhere we Go”, speaking to the UT regarding a dullness in campaigning today, Ryan Bartlett said that campus was notably less busy with campaigners today. “It is quite quiet around campus today, on top of that after three days of campaigning a lot of people now know about the elections, but the positivity toward the campaign is still evident”. Ryan spent most of his day making lecture addresses throughout College and his stunt was well received by potential voters. Seb LeCocq also spent his day in the Hamilton building and is trying to attract voters to his stand by letting them play his Nintendo Wii. Aaron Heffernan apparently spent the day “golfing” (or catching up on his course work depending on who we talk to). The lack of energy in this race is forgivable today but these guys are going to have to whip out the big guns next week to convince the indecisive voters of Trinity.
Communications:
From talking to students on the ground about the Communications race, there is a shocking lack of knowledge about what the Communications officer actually does. One student, talking to our Communications reporter Caelainn Hogan, said, “I don’t really pay too much attention to the communications race, because it’s not really a category that effects me, I think I could go through the whole of next year without having too much contact with the community people, don’t they deal with mental health and that stuff?” This is something that Ronan Costello has said he will try to deal with if elected. He is trying to publish, “A Dummy’s Guide to The SU” to be given out to incoming freshers. Students seem to be responding well to this sort of initiative that Costello because he has pushed his lead up to 63% of the students who took the survey. This is the biggest popularity margin in all of this years’ races. Co-manager of the campaign, Darragh Haugh said, “from what I’ve seen in the last few days, I think we’re putting out a much stronger campaign, much more thought out, and demonstrating that Ronan is clearly the better candidate.”
We got in touch with Eleni Megoran today to ask her how she felt about fighting what seems to be a losing battle. She said “the overwhelmingly positive response that my team and I get does not correlate to the poll’s result.” Somehow I doubt that Eleni will go down without a fight. She responded to Haugh’s quote by saying ” I think we’re running two very different campaigns. My experience with professional organisations such as the BBC matches my objective to professionalise the way the University Times is run and to raise the overall quality of communications between the SU and the student body.” If I had any advice for Eleni it would be to not rely so heavily on her past experience and to put the emphasis on how she plans to innovate and evolve the University Times and how she plans on solving the “Communication problem” that both candidates have identified.
Welfare:
The only thing that has changed in this race since the last poll is that Louisa’s lead has shrunk slightly and Russell and Caroline have increased their percentages a little. Darren O’Gorman is still at 30% which puts him 6% below Louisa. Pressure is mounting on these two to prove that they have enough steam to take the lead. Other than that it was a fairly boring and uneventful day for our Welfare candidates. They more or less did the same thing as they did yesterday (with the exception of going on their collaborative field-trip to St James’). Even Darren O’Gorman commented that, “everyone seems to be hitting a brick wall today. Its very slow. But there was a positive repsonse up in the Hamilton – we’re still meeting lots of people. Going to have a few stunts over the next while to boost the campaign a bit. All will be revealed.” Sounds promising. Anything to heat this race up a bit. He also commented on Russell’s statement that Welfare is a political office. He said, “The welfare officer should be chiefly concerned with the welfare of the students. Although this involves advocacy through political means, it is not a political office.” Yes! Thank you! We now have two candidates in this race who are willing to engage with each other. Maybe this section won’t so painful to compile tomorrow night. Get the boot in lads.
Education:
Shockingly little happened today in the Education race. Now that the two candidates have washed their dirty laundry in public, they are getting on like two peas in a pod. Shit! What happened guys? Remember when you were calling each other drunken paedophiles? You couldn’t have made that stuff up. Now you’re just being nice. Rachel has held her ground above John and it seems its going to stay that way. John’s just not making up the numbers on the ground. As one student said, “Rachel’s policies are stronger than Cooney’s. Education in college is about striking a balance between social and learning. She’s a serious candidate and well better than yer man.” This may be the only race in the entire election that will be won and lost on policy alone. That may not make for a very entertaining race at the end of the day but you never know with these guys. It could go nuclear tomorrow if Rachel claims that John tells children that Santa doesn’t exist or something equally strange untrue.
I expect the wind is well and truly out of the candidates’ sails as they head towards the weekend. To quote Ents Officer, Darragh Genockey, “they all deserve to have a few beers after the week they’ve had.” Not a bad idea, Genockey. Tomorrow is probably going to be equally uneventful but we’ll try our best to catch the exhausted candidates off guard. Cruel? Maybe. Entertaining? Always.
