Days of election domination are gone but Fianna Fail still in pole position

Fragmentation of the vote means the era of permanent coalitions has arrived, with Independents sure to play a key role in forming Government, writes Dan O’Brien

‘Some in Fianna Fail still believe the party can return to the glory days’

LAST March, this column considered the outcome of the next general election. It concluded that Fianna Fail was in a better position to lead the next Government than Fine Gael. Despite Fianna Fail’s front bench turmoil this weekend over voting irregularities in the Dail, developments since then have reinforced that conclusion.

An important reason to believe Fianna Fail is still in pole position is its performance in the local and European elections in May and in subsequent opinion polls.

In the local elections at the end of May, Fianna Fail pipped Fine Gael, winning slightly more of the first preference vote. While the governing party did considerably better than Fianna Fail in the European elections held at the same time, the locals are historically a better indicator of party support and, crucially, performance in subsequent general elections.

Opinion polls since May point to the two Civil War parties running neck and neck. Although recent days may have tilted the balance towards Fine Gael, thanks to Brexit developments and the Dail voting controversy, the bounce Leo Varadkar gave to his party after being elected leader in mid-2017 has dissipated. The clear lead his party enjoyed up to the end of last year is gone.

With both parties stuck on levels of support of less than 30pc of the electorate, the changed postcrash political landscape looks to be settling down. The days of Fianna Fail winning 40-50pc of the vote are almost certainly gone forever. The era of permanent coalitions has well and truly arrived.

If both parties have the number of seats in the 33rd Dail that recent elections and polls are pointing to, they will need a lot of extra seats to get anywhere near a majority. The preferred option for both of the big parties after the election is to form a coalition with the smaller parties — the Greens, Independents and the more moderate leftist groupings. Here, Fianna Fail has a marginal advantage.

The smaller parties and independents will play the big two off against each other, but given that Fianna Fail is closer to most of them on favouring public spending over tax cuts, it is likely to be in a better position to win (and buy) their support. The fact Fine Gael has been in power for more than a decade is another factor which may give Fianna Fail the edge in government formation talks.

Some people in the big Civil War parties are more optimistic about their prospects at the election. They believe in the power a good campaign can have and how momentum can be generated. Some in Fianna Fail still believe the party can return to the glory days when it topped the poll in 25 consecutive general elections.

These hopes are forlorn. Fragmentation of the vote is a fact of life. One only has to look at peer countries, particularly those which have broadly similar electoral systems, to see the same changed voting pattern. More diverse societies, the decline of class-based voting, lower political party membership and the emergence of social media have all combined to cause voting to fragment in most democracies. The frequent result of this has been the decline of the big centre-left and centre-right parties and the rise of smaller niche parties.

If Ireland is different from peer countries in the evolution of its politics, it is in the role played by Independent TDs. The uniquely large share of independent parliamentarians in Ireland has less to do with voter preference and more to do with the unusual rules of the electoral game.

In most democracies which use proportional representation voting systems, political groupings must win a minimum share of the national vote to take seats in parliament. Such thresholds — usually around 4pc — exist specifically to discourage the sort of Independents-based fragmentation that Ireland has experienced over the past decade.

In Ireland, a Dail candidate can get elected with less than 0.03pc of nationwide first preference vote. While a case can be made for Independents as a positive force in politics, it is hard to deny that having more of them makes forming Governments more difficult.

Both May’s elections and subsequent opinion polls suggest there will be another historically large crop of Independents in the 33rd Dail. They will almost certainly play a role in Government formation.

One party that is less likely to be making a play for cabinet seats after the next election than was thought possible until only recently is Sinn Fein. In both the local and European elections in May, its vote was 40pc lower than in the same elections five years earlier. The scale and significance of these reversals has received less analysis from commentators than might have been anticipated given how unusual it is for an opposition political party in any democracy to experience such a huge decrease in support in the absence of a major scandal.

While Sinn Fein has had a wave of minor scandals involving members leaving over charges of bullying and other such behaviours, there were no predictions before May that the party would experience a loss of almost half its support. If anything, it could have been expected to increase its vote share, for at least two reasons.

First, the conventional wisdom, which I shared, had it that the passing of the baton from Gerry Adams to Mary Lou McDonald would lessen the party’s toxicity for a substantial number of voters. While it may have become less toxic for some under the new leader, other factors have clearly more than offset this in terms of support.

Second, voters have been telling pollsters for some time that health and housing are among the policy areas they are least satisfied with under the current Government. Sinn Fein representatives have gained high profiles by excoriating the relevant ministers on these issues. The collapse in support for the party last May shows that whatever exposure it is getting on these matters, it is not translating into electoral support.

So what accounts for the sudden reversal in fortunes of a party that has enjoyed almost uninterrupted advances in recent years?

Economic factors are the most obvious after-the-fact explanation. Depression and austerity drove voters away from the mainstream parties and into the arms of the likes of Sinn Fein. The water charges controversy, which was building at the time of the 2014 local and European elections, may have mobilised those more inclined to vote. With that controversy a distant memory, and the economy back to near full employment conditions, those who gave their votes to Sinn Fein a half decade ago may have switched back to more centrist parties, or not voted at all.

A second probable explanation for Sinn Fein’s loss of support is the environment. It is unlikely to go away as a hot topic any time soon, particularly for younger voters who have tended to be the age cohort most supportive of Sinn Fein. If younger voters shift towards the Green Party in big numbers at the next election, Mary Lou McDonald could be in big trouble.

For the first time since the 1990s, the rise of Sinn Fein does not appear so inexorable or so inevitable.