IRELAND has voted for more of the same. And why wouldn't it? A booming economy, full employment, and a government that has money to spend. November’s general election didn’t throw up too many surprises. The political centre held as people voted for the continued economic prosperity proffered by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (above).
Noisy and insistent calls for radical change were ignored by voters. Unlike international trends which saw incumbent governments get a kicking by the electorate, the results were similar to those of the 2020 election.
It was a very good election for the fully rehabilitated Fianna Fáil who won most seats with 48, Sinn Féin won 39, and Fine Gael 38. The outgoing coalition’s junior party, the Greens were decimated, losing 11 out of their 12 TDs and party leader, Roderic O’Gorman, was very lucky to retain his seat.
On the left, the Social Democrats fared best, almost doubling their seats to 11. Labour increased their seats as did the socially conservative Aontú and Independent Ireland parties.
The combined first-preference vote for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael remains virtually unchanged at 42.7 per cent. The combined total for the left-leaning parties is floating at around 35 per cent.
Wallets over ballots
Egocentric voting was the order of the day. People voted with their wallets. Those who felt the economy was going ok voted for the incumbents. This was borne out by the exit poll whereby about two thirds of respondents said that their personal finances remained stable or had improved in the previous 12 months. This was probably as a result of the expansive budget and increased investment in public infrastructure.
The returning of the dominant parties is remarkable, bucking the trends that saw the Conservatives kicked out of Downing Street, Joe Biden out of the White House, the end of the ANC in South Africa, and similar outcomes in Japan, France, and India. Sitting governments tend to lose some support from one election to the next. Not so Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael who only lost a small fraction of their 2020 vote share. The public rewarded their economic competence.
Beneath the bonnet
Something is stirring in Irish politics. Fianna Fáil won 27 per cent of the seats on just 22 per cent of the vote. This is an irregular outcome. It has happened because the smaller parties and independent candidates don’t have sufficient brand recognition or a charismatic leader to convert voter share into actual seats. The smaller parties have increased their share of the vote but have returned fewer seats, making the win for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael appear greater than it actually was.
Notwithstanding this anomaly the results are clear, those who feel their standard of living has improved over the past 12 months favoured Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and returned them to office.
Issues
The cost of living, affordable housing and homelessness were the main concerns for voters since the 2020 election and housing was the issue most likely to be cited as determining how someone was going to vote, for a significant portion of the electorate. Thirty-one per cent of people living in rented accommodation and 41 per cent of those in council housing strongly supported Sinn Féin.
Older people voted for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with both winning 64 per cent of the votes of people aged 75 and older, but just 22 per cent of those aged between 18 and 24. Younger women were more likely to vote for left-wing parties including Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, Labour and People Before Profit-Solidarity. Much of this is explained by the housing crisis. Bluntly, if you have a mortgage you are less likely to vote for ‘change’ parties.
While the cost of living and the lack of affordable housing dominated the campaign it didn’t make a significant impact on the results of the election. Ireland has an acute housing shortage, estimates vary between 250,000 to 300,000 new homes are needed to meet the current shortfall and future population growth. Not enough homes were built during the Celtic Tiger era and the 2008 financial crash effectively halted all infrastructure investments such as the expansion and modernisation of sewage works, utilities, and the roads needed to service new communities. This has hurt the vulnerable in Irish society with soaring house prices, rising rents and growing homelessness both hidden and street homelessness.
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin’s rise to power on both sides of the Irish border has been checked, its share of the vote shrank from a quarter to a fifth since 2020.
Beset by a series of internal scandals—and especially, it has been seen as lacking in the area of child protection—it has looked rattled and struggled to get on top of the issues. This spooked those middle-class voters who had begun to look at Sinn Féin with softer eyes. Much of their vote returned to the safer, centre-left parties of Labour and the Social Democrats.
Mary-Lou MacDonald—Ireland’s natural successor to Mary Harney or Mary O’Rourke, coming as she does from the same Fianna Fáil gene-pool—once looked unstoppable. Has she peaked? Party colleagues are openly talking about the post-Mary-Lou era.
Two years ago, support for Sinn Féin was roughly 37 per cent. They made the cost-of-living crisis their own and were being taken seriously as the next potential government. The government’s direct public spending approach mitigated the worst of the cost of living hardship, effectively taking the wind out of Sinn Féin’s sails.
Those voters that left Sinn Féin since its peak have gone to Independents, to the ‘soft’ left and, those with higher incomes returned to Fianna Fáil and even Fine Gael as concerns about the cost of living declined.
Sinn Féin won more seats than Fine Gael but it is still a poor performance as their share of the vote dropped by 5.5 per cent since their 2020 general election peak.
The far-right
Immigration, has become a relatively novel challenge to an Irish society long defined by its diaspora. The arrival of 100,000 Ukrainian victims of Russia’s invasion and thousands of people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East and Africa have reached a noticeably visible threshold. Ireland has struggled to house these traumatised people
satisfactorily. Temporary accommodation with inadequate support services has become a touchstone for public discontent.
However, despite concerns about voting patterns in Europe, far-right parties failed to make any ground in the 2024 Irish general elections.
Immigration was often cited as a serious concern among voters but in reality this didn’t turn into votes. The speed and visible rise in the number of asylum seekers caught civil society off-guard. Services struggled to maintain pace with demand and people became agitated. This created fertile ground for anti-migrant voices.
The short-lived but Tiktok friendly riot in Dublin last year, in tangent with protests in rural Ireland about providing temporary shelter for Ukrainians and asylum seekers, meant that the story was rarely out of the news.
Without a recognised political party to voice their concerns some looked to Sinn Féin. However, after an initial ham-fisted effort to keep the right-wing onside with their centre-left members and supporters, they ditched any whispers of anti-migrant sentiment resulting in these voters turning away from them.
The small far-right parties achieved 4.9 per cent in the European election in June but only managed to win just 1.5 per cent in November’s general election.
While immigration has declined as an issue in the months immediately preceding the election, the Irish electoral system and political culture allow for significant numbers of independent candidates to get elected. Polls indicate that the far-right voter would find it easier to vote for independent candidates because they are the most likely to hold anti-liberal and anti-immigration views.
Another factor in maintaining high levels of support for the governing parties is Ireland’s attitude to party activism. The local party member and the grassroots organisation remains important in Irish elections. The famed Fianna Fáil machine, whilst nowhere near as powerful as in its halcyon days, still carries weight with 55 per cent of voters reporting being canvassed by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael or both during the final stages of the election campaign, thereby shoring up any potential leaking of support.
Summary
Under the governance of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, Ireland has transitioned from one of Europe’s poorest countries isolated on the Atlantic fringe of the continent, overshadowed by a truculent UK, into one of its wealthiest.
Once a place where mass emigration provided a safety valve for a failing economy, now it is a magnet for young, intelligent professionals who are in turn creating a new Ireland where one in five residents were born outside the island.
Together with the Green Party they managed the country through the twin catastrophes of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. They maintained a consistently high level of public support during both crises. Contrast the reassuring performance of the Irish Government with the chaos of Boris Johnson’s Tories and Trump’s first term. So, why shouldn’t we vote for them?
Stephen Colbert is a lecturer at New College Lanarkshire
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