Irish general election, 26th Feb 2016

[DC Al Fine]

How do parties decide how many candidates to run? It looks like there is a trade off between running enough people to win additional seats and 'leakage' in preferencing.

Also, is there much competition between candidates of the same party?

[DC Al Fine]

A few coalition related questions. Apologies if these have been addressed already and I missed them:

1) Which parties are "untouchables" when it comes to coalition making?

2) I assume a FF-FG grand coalition would be electorally disastrous for both parties?

3) Are the independents' leanings known? Does the high number of them favour a particular party?

[DC Al Fine]

Thanks for the answers. One other question just for fun: which politician/party is equivalent to Sanders/Paul? (i.e. They have a lot of young, loud supporters and do much better on the internet than in real life?)

[DC Al Fine]

Could they just alter water charges progressively so rich people more, or, err, link the fee to water usage rather than being flat?

Because this is Fine Gael

Wait, people don't pay their utilities based on usage in Ireland? Isn't that a massive moral hazard?

[DC Al Fine]

Some more random questions:

1) What does an FF/FG swing voter look like?
2) What voters is Sinn Fein appealing to exactly? How do their demographics look compared to Labour/Misc. Left wing parties?
3) Is FG & Labour's propensity to form coalitions almost entirely based around the fact that they are not FF?

[DC Al Fine]

Thanks much appreciated.