Ireland's Gays Go To The Polls

TOPICS: Mainstream media news. Ireland - Irish Times newspaper. GCN. Gay Community News. Pink vote. The Gay Vote. gayvote.ie website set up to provide a forum for gay and lesbian irish voters to have their say. New Ireland research for GCN reveals that lesbian and gay voters more likely to support Labour and Greens in this week's Irish elections.

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There is a general election in Ireland on Thursday this week.

Some weeks ago, a new website TheGayVote was set up to provide a forum for Irish lesbians and gays to cast their voices and opinions before they cast their ballots.

The campaign coordinator David Cochrane said of the new website: "With little differences between the political parties on taxation, health care and even stamp duty, TheGayVote wishes to highlight the differing views held by the parties when it comes to gay rights. Some parties want full gay marriage, some want civil unions, and some parties want nothing at all. Our campaign will seek to raise awareness of the website, which will highlight the differences between the parties on gay rights."

Reuters predicts that the race is too close to call and that the incumbent leader - Bertie Ahern - is staging a late comeback.

I really like election-watching so this week is one to watch for me. I was really pleased when one of our gay media clients - GCN in Ireland asked us to rush release new findings from an analysis we were asked to do for them.

It made for quite interesting reading - the two main political parties scored lower with gay and lesbian voters than with the general community, and Labour and the Greens scored higher. It is the first time any attempt has been made to track the gay vote in Ireland, and - while acknowledging the research data is only reflecting the GCN readership which has a male and a Dublin skew to it, the findings were nonetheless pretty timely.

Here is an extract of the Irish Times coverage of this research:

Labour attracts the 'pink' vote - survey
Elaine Edwards

Gay and lesbian voters are more likely to vote for the Labour Party than any other in next week's election, research carried out by a gay marketing agency suggests.

The Green Party also scored highly with lesbian and gay voters, according to the research for the widely read gay publication GCN .

Some 20 per cent of more than 1,000 people polled said they intended to vote for the Labour Party. A total of 16 per cent said they would vote for the Greens, while support for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael was 11 per cent and 7 per cent respectively, according to the survey.

Some 6 per cent of gay and lesbian voters intend to cast their ballot for the Progressive Democrats - a figure that puts support for the party among gay voters some four percentage points higher than in the electorate generally based on the most recent Irish Times /TNS mrbi poll.

A total of 3 per cent of gay voters say they will cast their votes for Sinn Féin, with the same number opting to vote for independent candidates, according to the research. Eight per cent of gay voters say they will not vote at all.

Some 1,191 respondents were surveyed between October 2006 and January 2007.

GCN editor Brian Finnegan said: "This is the first time the voting patterns of Ireland's sizeable gay community have been measured and independently analysed. They show that politicians have a lot to learn about Irish gays and lesbians."

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###LATEST PLANETOUT MEDIA UPDATE###:

In a follow-on from our report in Gay Market News last week about the market problems of media giant PlanetOut, the PlanetOut share price continues to fall. The stock is now trading at just a little above 99 cents, at its all time lows, after further big drops late last week and again today. The latest PlanetOut share price is here.

As we mentioned last week, the parallels between PlanetOut and the failed Australian gay media conglomerate, The Satellite Group - seem at this stage very concerning for investors in PlanetOut.

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