At just after 5.15pm when the result of the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was announced in Dublin Castle, it had already long been a foregone conclusion. For some hours beforehand, Government ministers were openly conceding that the referendum was lost and by a decisive margin. A total of 752,451 people voted Yes but against that, some 852,415 voted No. Harry McGee,Political Staff, reports
Broken down in percentages that was 47 per cent Yes and 53 per cent No. Interestingly, that was exactly the same spoil of the vote that occurred for Nice I. However, the difference this time was the turnout. Then it was only 35 per cent. In the wake of that 2001 defeat, the Government knew that by a campaign honing in on key 'gains' from Nice plus the insertion of a protocol on neutrality, it could reverse the result.
Today, not even the most optimistic strategist on the Yes side was saying that. This time the turnout was 53 per cent. With so many people voting in a European referendum, that six point margin could not be so easily turned around.
Even before the counting started this morning, the straws were flying in the wind.
In the absence of exit polls from last night, the only evidence of how the nation had decided the Lisbon Treaty was anecdotal – from the vox pops done by radio stations, national and local, interviewing people as they emerged from polling stations. And they were very telling.
The majority of people emerging from polling stations were readily saying they were voting no. The reasons varied. But there was no denying the vehemence and deliberateness of the decisions they had arrived at. Ominously for the Yes side they included people who could be classed as the 'mom and pop' cohort, solid, conventional people whom the Yes side have banked on in previous referendums.
Those strong signals were borne out as the ballot boxes were opened this morning. Compared to a general election, there were no organised tallies – or if they were, they were no more than sporadic 'sampling'. But for everybody leaning over the railings looking at the ballot papers being sorted, the pattern was obvious. It was trending no. And trending no in the vast bulk of constituencies.
By 10am it was clear that the referendum would be lost. However, as the morning progressed, pundits who had earlier forecast a landslide were trimming back the predictions and saying it would be closer. However, as the first counts came in just before 1pm, returns from the two Tipperary and Kerry constituencies, and Waterford suggested the gap overall would be around 10 per cent, but closer in Dublin.
Dublin South East came in with a whopping 65 per cent No on a 53 per cent turnout at lunchtime. And Mayo, the home constituency of Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, also rejected the treaty by a large margin of 61 per cent to 39 per cent.
Most of the 43 constituencies rejected the treaty, and on a higher turnout. Only a few constituencies - Dublin South, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin South East, Kildare South and North among them - bucked the trend.
This referendum usurped much of the wisdom that grew up in the wake of the two Nice referendums. The first Nice referendum in 2001 was defeated on a very low turnout of 35 per cent. In the second Nice referendum, the turnout was a very respectable 49 per cent with the Yes side mopping up all of the extra voting. From that experience, there was a working assumption that a higher turnout favoured a Yes vote.
It is clearly not the case this time. The turnout is even higher than in Nice II and that has worked to the advantage of the No side. Indeed, the evidence from last Friday's opinion poll in the Irish Times showed a No majority across virtually all age cohorts and social groupings. And as is evidenced from Dublin South West, turnout was unusually high in some working class areas, where there was a clear anti-treaty sentiment.
Campaign strategists have been saying this morning that rural Ireland has voted No in a clear fashion. In urban areas, the No vote was running ahead thanks to a strong No vote among blue collar workers, which was not countered by a strong enough Yes side in middle class areas and constituencies. Only two constituencies voted Yes in 2001 for Nice I. They were Dun Laoghaire and Dublin South. While more look like siding Yes today, there is also clear evidence that a significant minority of middle class urban voters had serious reservations about what Lisbon entailed.
There were many explanations and some recriminations among politicians and campaigners from both sides this morning. Junior minister Noel Ahern said that the Yes side had ultimately failed to get its message across.
"It was very hard to sell it. It lacked one god major thing that you could sell. In the absence of that, it allowed misinformation to be spread."
Ahern said that the money spend on the Referendum Commission's campaign was a waste. "The booklet and the advertising did not contribute a lot."
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan entered the hall around midday. As he tried to be interviewed he was drowned out by a chorus of chants from over-charged anti-treaty Cóir supporters. While not conceding defeat, he expressed disappointment and said that the Government was now "in uncharted waters".
"We have to see what the view of our European partners is. We are clearly not in a position to ratify."
Lenihan said he found the debate difficult. "It was like a boxer that was observing the rules fighting against a boxer that wasn't."
Former Labour leader Pat Rabbitte gave one of the most colourful descriptions of the obstacles the Yes campaign encountered. He said that it was like playing a computer game when just as you zap the bad guy, another two appear out of nowhere.
In an inkling of the blame game, both Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael and Joe Costello of Labour said that the Government's campaign had started too late. Varadkar said that the No side had played the race card and also blamed politicians from the Yes side from insisting on putting their own faces on posters. He also said that questions would have to be asked about the Referendum Commission's campaign, which he described as "appalling".
Others like former European Parliament president Pat Cox were pointing to complex and myriad reasons related to the downturn in the economy, lack of confidence in Europe, sectoral interests like farming and fishing, as well as like an unspoken antipathy in some areas to the large number of immigrants in Ireland.,
Varadkar said that a xenophobia and a 'race card' were clear factors in the campaign - "the elephant in the room that nobody dared mention during the campaign," he said.
On the No side, a clearly delighted Patricia McKenna, upon entering the RDS, said she herself thought the Yes side was going to prevail because last Friday's poll in the Irish Times had jolted it into action. She said that she agreed with Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin that there should be no knee-jerk reaction.
"There is a huge demand for referendums for this in other EU countries. There's a major disconnect between the political parties and the electorate on this. People did not want their power as citizens to be handed over to a political elite in Brussels.
Equally Naoise Nunn of Libertas said he was cautiously optimistic.
"It was too much, too soon and too quick for people. There was no sufficient consultation with the people. There's an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and give the EU a proper function with proper democratic accountability," Nunn told The Irish Times, as he entered the hall.
Later Gerry Adams portrayed it as a David and Goliath contest, where the smaller side had won out. He said the result of the referendum now gave Taoiseach Brian Cowen a clear mandate to go to Brussels and renegotiate a better deal.