The two major center-right parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, have won the elections in Ireland and will once again form a government coalition. Sinn Féin, the nationalist party furthest to the left and which won in votes in 2020, is the party that has lost the most percentage of votes and has come in third position.
With this scenario, it is expected that the two center-right parties will once again form a new coalition with the support of some smaller group. Until now they governed with the Greens, who have collapsed, so the most likely options are Labour, the Social Democrats or both.
Fianna Fáil, the party that has governed Ireland the longest, is once again the first party, with 22% of the vote; Fine Gael, under current Prime Minister Simon Harris, has around 21% of the votes and Sinn Féin 19%, that is, five points less than in 2020, according to data from the almost complete scrutiny this Monday.
Sinn Féin has been hit by several internal scandals that have affected Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership in recent weeks. In the 2020 elections, Sinn Féin won for the first time in number of votes (although not in number of seats and did not have a sufficient parliamentary majority to govern). Furthermore, his policies on immigration, family and the economy have been criticized for their contradictions on the left and right.
Fine Gael, the leader of the current coalition, has lost ground in the final days of the campaign after several missteps by Prime Minister Harris.
Fianna Fáil is the nationalist party that has governed the longest since Ireland’s independence and is expected to now decide the prime minister, at least for the next two years if the two major parties divide the mandate.
Long scrutiny
The elections were held on Friday, but the counting has been extended until this Monday. This slowness is partly due to the complex electoral system.
The Irish vote in each district with the so-called “single transferable vote”. This means that the voter chooses candidates in order of preference in districts where between three and five deputies are elected. To win a seat, a candidate must meet a threshold that varies according to a formula in each district. The counting is done in several rounds: first the main preferences are counted, and if a candidate exceeds the threshold, the rest of their votes are redistributed according to the other preferences indicated by the voter. If no candidate reaches the threshold, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are transferred to the others. This process is repeated until all seats are assigned with the idea of minimizing the “waste” of votes. But with so many rounds, the final result of the elections takes several days to be known. This year, in addition, there were up to twenty candidates in each district due to the multiplication of the so-called independent parties on the left and right (including the extremes).
The coalition
With weeks of negotiations remaining, the most likely coalition is that of the large center-right parties with Labor and/or the Social Democrats.
Ireland already has several parties that can be described as far-right due to their immigration policy and their inspiration – even direct slogans – from Donald Trump, but none has consolidated around a leader. According to the provisional results, they may get some deputies among the so-called independents, but there is still no strong party that unites them.
Liz Carolan, a journalist specializing in politics and technology, explains to elDiario.es that some of these far-right candidates began their careers as “influencers” so “their campaigns are an extension of their existing online presence”, often based on videos of confrontations with politicians or related to migrants.
Rich country and Trump risk
Ireland is now one of the richest countries in Europe, among other things due to the presence of multinationals from the United States and other places that have settled there because of the language and lower taxes.
But the most debated challenge among the major parties is how to now manage the risk that part of that business is in danger if the new Trump Administration imposes more obstacles to trade.
In a country of just over five million inhabitants, there are almost 1,000 United States companies that employ almost 400,000 people in Ireland and leave the country around 41 billion euros each year, according to data from the Chamber of Commerce. Michele Crepaz, a political scientist at Queen’s College Belfast, explains the message now from Irish politicians: “If Trump closes the door to trade, then we have a problem and we need to take it into account.”
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