It’s transfers that will decide who wins and loses out in this election

THE system we will use to vote next Friday, proportional representation via the single transferable vote, is easy for the electorate to use and should theoretically give rise to a proportional Dáil. The idea is that parties, and indeed independents, should get seats relative to their vote. It doesn’t quite work like that in practice, though, as seat bonuses are quite common in Irish politics.

Essentially, the seat bonus is the number of extra seats a party gets beyond what it proportionally should receive, given its percentage of the vote. This seat bonus will be the key to the election.

While party strategists are always chasing first-preference votes, the secret to winning more seats is to simply get large numbers of transfers from whatever quarter. As the counts extend into next Saturday night and Sunday morning, it is transfers which will decide the outcome of seats and of government formation.

The 2011 general election was the most disproportional Irish election ever. Both Fine Gael and Labour won sizeable seat bonuses, while Fianna Fáil was significantly under-represented. Fine Gael received a bonus of 16 seats, the largest any party has ever won in an Irish election. Fianna Fáil, for its troubles, received a ‘negative bonus’ of 10 seats, the worse any party has ever suffered.

The seat bonus derives from the fact that, looked at internationally, Ireland has small constituencies and it is often impossible to produce proportional results in constituencies of only three, four and five seats. Winning two seats in a three-seater constituency or three seats in a five-seater is certainly viable for a large party on close to 40% of the vote. Fine Gael, for instance, won 55% of the seats in five-seater constituencies in 2011, despite only winning 38% of the first-preference vote.

As a golden rule, the more transfer-friendly a party is, the greater its chance of a significant seat bonus. Fianna Fáil historically struggled to win any significant seat bonus as supporters of all other parties used their transfers against it.

Once it discovered a coalition dance partner in the form of the PDs, Fianna Fáil became less transfer-toxic and its seat bonus subsequently rocketed, reaching a high of 13 in 2002, when Bertie Ahern came agonisingly close to an overall majority. When Fianna Fáil couldn’t buy a transfer in 2011, it suffered the ignominy of the largest-ever ‘negative bonus’.

Equally, Sinn Féin struggles for seat bonuses simply because it is so transfer-unfriendly. The 2014 local elections did see Sinn Féin and the Anti-Austerity Alliance parties transfer to each in some numbers.

For Sinn Féin to make a significant breakthrough in this election, however, it will need to attract transfers in far greater numbers than it ever has before and from places other than the hard Left.

The other main factor that affects a party’s conversion of votes into seats is the distribution of its vote among its candidates.

While parties running more than one candidate in a constituency like to operate vote-management schemes, it is easier said than done. Strong candidates can be reluctant to give up any votes and intra-party competition can often be as intense and bitter as interparty competition.

At the 2011 general election, if just over 250 of Eamon Gilmore’s 11,468 first preferences in Dún Laoghaire had gone to his running mate, Ivana Bacik, she would certainly have taken a second seat for Labour. Something similar happened with Seán Sherlock in Cork East. In contrast, Fine Gael was extraordinarily disciplined in its transfer strategy and reaped the rewards.

BUT if parties don’t have the votes in the first place, it can’t manage them, which is what happened to Fianna Fáil in 2011 and Fine Gael in 2002, when the votes of both parties collapsed. Large parties used to government also tend to run excessive numbers of candidates, even when their support is clearly in freefall, as was the case when Fianna Fáil ran 75 candidates in 2011, although it had been polling only 15% in the lead up to the election.

Ultimately, transfers decide Irish elections. More than any other election in the history of the State, this will be the case next week when the votes are counted.

Looking back at 2011, there is no solace for Labour in the figures then, in that only 45% of Fine Gael transfers went to a Labour candidate. It was only 38% in the other direction.

Voters minded to re-elect the current Government might bring these figures up slightly but we are unlikely to see a major increase next week. Labour’s big task in this election is to get enough first-preference votes to remain in contests long enough to pick up transfers.

Given the toxicity Labour induces amongst working-class voters, it needs large numbers of transfers from the middle-class voters of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Social Democrats and the Greens to have any chance of being competitive in this election.

Transfer patterns in modern Irish politics are becoming increasingly difficult to analyse. Internal party solidarity in transfers for both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has declined considerably since the early 1980s, when such figures were well over 80%.

In 2011, the figure for Fianna Fáil was 58% and it was 68% for Fine Gael. The reality now in Irish politics is that all parties, and indeed independents, are more acutely aware than ever that transfers are not only crucial but can be got from any voter.

The antipathy towards the established parties has crystallised in recent polls. Besides Sinn Féin, new parties in the guise of Renua and the Social Democrats, the amorphous Independent Alliance, and the hard Left of the AAA/PBP are all seeking to capitalise on the electorate’s discontent with the established political offerings.

The changed landscape of Irish politics and the possibility of numerous alliances in terms of government formation offers the voters a myriad of transfer choices. The evidence in rural Ireland, in particular, is that tribalism and geography matter. Voters there are much more likely to vote for candidates from their area. This will be crucial in constituencies such as Cavan-Monaghan, Sligo-Leitrim, Longford-Westmeath and Carlow-Kilkenny.

For the newer parties, it seems reasonable to suggest that those giving their first preference to the Social Democrats would look to the soft Left of Labour when transferring and that such transfers could well save people like John Lyons in Dublin North West and Emmet Stagg in Kildare North.

GIVEN that its origins are in a disaffected Fine Gael rump, one would expect Renua voters to transfer in that direction, but the antipathy of those running for Renua to their former party makes me consider that they are far more likely to transfer in the first instance to like-minded independents. Likewise, it is difficult to see Fine Gaelers transferring in any numbers to Renua, which makes their first-preference vote crucial.

Independent voters could well transfer anywhere. Left-minded voters should logically transfer to smaller parties, who are ideologically similar. This could well make the Social Democrats competitive in constituencies such as Dublin Central, Dublin Bay North and Galway West. There are no guarantees that those supporting socalled gene-pool independents will transfer back to the mother party, such is the disconnect between independent voters and the traditional parties.

For the AAA/PBP, it is clear that they will need significant Sinn Féin transfers to enable it to win a number of target seats. While it might decry Sinn Féin’s lack of ideological purity, the AAA/PBP will need their transfers and nowhere more than in Dublin West, where Ruth Coppinger will be fighting for every transfer she can get.

We may well be witnessing a complete realignment of Irish politics in this election. The proof of this will be seen if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael transfer to each other in record numbers and ultimately end up forming a government.

On the poll numbers we have seen throughout this campaign, that might well be the most logical outcome.