Victory in Ireland

Yesterday the Republic of Ireland held a historic referendum on repealing the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which prohibited abortion under practically all circumstances (no exceptions for rape, fetal non-viability, etc.).  While polling had pointed to a narrow win for repeal, two exit polls show a landslide result, 68% to 32%, for repealing the amendment and thus legalizing abortion.  The margin was even more lopsided among younger voters, 87% to 13% among those under 24.  These are exit polls, and the actual vote counting won't be finished until later today (The Irish Times will have ongoing coverage), but even if the actual margin is somewhat narrower, this is a stunning win in a country that was totally in the grip of the Catholic Church a generation ago and had been one of the strongest bastions of the Church for fifteen centuries.

Ireland has been changing.  Three years ago it became the first country to legalize gay marriage by popular referendum (as opposed to court rulings or legislation), by a margin of 62% to 38%.  The current Prime Minister is openly gay.  78% of the population still identifies as Catholic, but weekly church attendance among Catholics is down from 91% in 1972 to 30% in 2011 (14% in Dublin), and many of those who still go do so only for family or social reasons.

Life under the abortion ban was marked by degradation and hypocrisy.  Many women needing abortions traveled to nearby Britain to obtain them, or resorted to unsafe illegal methods.  For some, yesterday's vote was a chance to strike back at oppressive tradition and its enforcers.

Based on what I've been seeing on hard-line Catholic websites, many opponents of repeal followed a strategy of mumbling to themselves, fiddling with beads, and not eating (or as they describe it, praying the Rosary and fasting).  For some reason, this apparently did not prove effective in changing the outcome.  One wishes our opponents would entirely confine themselves to such methods, but I suppose it's too much to hope for.

There is a lesson for Americans here.  Polling before the vote predicted a narrow win for repeal, while the exit polls show the actual result was around two-to-one.  There are a variety of reasons why polling can fail to predict a vote accurately.  In a case like this, where interest and emotion are running high, one possibility is failure to predict turnout.  Pollsters must guess at which groups will actually vote and in what numbers; if actual turnout patterns are different, the actual vote outcome may be far different from what the poll predicted.  In Ireland, by all accounts, turnout was astonishingly high.  The increased victory margin may reflect high turnout among groups that usually vote in only meager numbers, such as young people, or the pro-repeal side may have been more energized relative to its opponents than pollsters expected.  Here in the US, Democrats have often done better in special elections over the last year than polling suggested, and this too may reflect an especially motivated Democratic base.  But in November, the Trumpanzees too may be energized by fear of Trump being impeached if Democrats win the House.  In the polarized and intense politics of the US today, we can't let polls push us into overconfidence or despair.  Turnout will be everything, and every battle must be fought hard.

Update:  The official result is in -- 66.4% for repeal, 33.6% against.