Thursday, January 23, 2025

Irish poor voters as US improve and Nordic stars

The 2024 Irish general election to elect the 34th Dáil (Parliament) took place on Friday, 29 November 2024.

National voter turnout at 59.71% was down 3.19% on the general election in February 2020 when it was 62.9%.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) based in Stockholm, has a database of the Voting Age Population (VAP), as well as the number of Registered Voters (REG) as indicators of political participation.

The VAP figure includes an estimated number of all those citizens over the legal voting age, while the registration rate comprises the actual number of people on the voters’ roll.

The VAP Turnout for Ireland on 29 November 2024 was 54.86% and 85.17% in 1977.

Country data are found here.

Ireland's VAP Turnout rate was only 56.65% in the general election of 2020; 58.04% in 2016 and 63.78% in 2011.

In Age of Conflict only 7.8% of World Population in Full Democracies

Sunday, January 05, 2025

Europe and Britain struggle in changing markets in 2025


In Europe 2024, the STOXX 600 ended the 52 weeks with a gain of 6%, according to Reuters. The STOXX and the American S&P 500 tracked each other from the early 1990s but from about 2012, the 500 never looked back.

The Financial Times at the year-end reported that Germany has an answer to US “magnificent seven” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla).