Midsummer political sweepstakes

[This blog will be a published to a fortnightly summer schedule for the rest of July and August. Normal weekly service (or lack of it) will resume in September.

At the beginning of this month, Paddy Power was offering odds on, 4/7, that Sinn Féin will win most seats at the next Irish general election. Fine Gael are at 13/8, Fianna Fáil a long way back at 10/1 and the rest nowhere. Back in January, the bookie was offering Evens on Sinn Féin winning most seats with Fine Gael at 6/4 and Fianna Fáil at 4/1.

The expectation of improved prospects for Sinn Féin since January reflects the trend of recent opinion polls. Whereas the broad picture of polls in the second half of 2020 was for Fine Gael to have their noses slightly in front, in the first half of this year Sinn Féin has achieved a slight edge.

Paddy Power doesn’t expect an election any time soon. It is offering 5/2 against an election this year and those odds lengthen through 2022 (7/2) and 2023 (6/1) before tightening again in 2024 (4/1) and 2025 (2/1). The next election must be held by 20 February 2025.

Two points about opinion polls.

First, without an election remotely on the horizon, they may reflect more voters’ casual thoughts than their considered intentions. The last election was on 8 February 2020. Six months before it, Sinn Féin support hovered not much above double digits. In two national elections on 24 May 2019, its vote in those forthe European Parliament and the elections for local authorities were 12% and 10% respectively. Less than a month before the general election, the first public opinion polls of 2020, published in The Sunday Times on 14 January and The Irish Times on 18 January had Sinn Féin support running at 19% and 21% respectively. In the actual election it won 24.5%.

Second, more speculatively, we are living in a strange time for politics. If “normal” politics has not been suspended altogether, it is certainly taking a back seat to all things related to COVID. This is like a volatile period in the stock markets where investors’ minds yo-yo sharply between greed and fear. Voters’ minds are caught in a continuing tension between the desire for a resumption of normal life and the desire to be protected from the virus. And when the government moves the dial more in one of these directions, the pendulum of public opinion very often swings quickly towards the opposite.

Politics is dominated by the who, what, when, why and how of opening and shutting, tightening and loosening. We are attuned tensely and intensely not only to the presence of the virus, but to its capacity to adapt and spring surprises, so there are few certainties, only provisional plans. While it looks like we are moving towards post-pandemic politics now, we are not there yet and there may be more twists in the road before we are.

As was the case in January, Paddy Power’s website is not offering odds regarding the make-up of the next government. In broad terms, the main parties’ ratings over the past six months have run like this: Sinn Féin 30%+, Fine Gael 30%-, and Fianna Fáil 20%-. There has been no noticeable shift in support among the pack behind them making up the remaining 25–30%.

As in January, while the actual shape of the next government is impossible to determine, we can offer reasonable guesses about the shape of the context from which it will emerge.

Sinn Féin will certainly increase its vote compared to 2020 and is likely but not certain to emerge with more Dáil seats than any other party. It will present itself credibly to the electorate as a potential leader of the next government based on a combination of its credentials as the leading current opposition party, its role as a constructive force in government in the North and offering something of an alternative way of doing things down here. It stands for transformation that amounts to more than changing the colour of post boxes from red to green, but actually changing their shape as well. The next election will not be like choosing between Lidl and Aldi.

The last election “morphed” during the campaign from a watery contest within the political establishment — whether Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil should lead the government — to one between the establishment and the insurgent — why shouldn’t Sinn Féin at least be in government? At the next election, Sinn Féin will be an insurgent within the overall establishment and an indisputable candidate to lead a government.

It is hard to see any of the parties behind it breaking out from the pack to threaten or even weaken that position significantly.

But unless its support base rises further, converting its leadership credentials into a stable government will still be something of a struggle for the party. It is still stretchy to see a next government being formed that does not include either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.

Second, though there is less certainty around the likely balance of support between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, it matters a great deal which of these two finishes ahead of the other and by how much.

Right now, things look brighter for Fine Gael. They had a poor general election in 2020 finishing third in terms of both votes and seats. But luck came grimly to their rescue with the arrival of COVID a month after the election and the four month hiatus before a “real” new government was established.

The national emergency alone might have propelled the party’s support from the 21% it had achieved in the February election to the opinion poll ratings of 30%+ by the end of March 2020, but its status as a “caretaker” and therefore quasi-non-political government helped too.

We should remember too that, if this government does survive until 2025, Fine Gael will have been in government for an unbroken 14-year period, almost as long as the continuous spells enjoyed by Fianna Fáil as a single party government from 1932–1948 and from 1957–1973. Fine Gael is no longer primarily seen as an opposition party that occasionally gets to govern but as the more “natural” party of government, a status Fianna Fáil surrendered when it was last in government.

Within the present government, the Departments for which Fine Gael has responsibility offer less scope for banana skins and screw-ups than those occupied by Fianna Fáil, so less scope for one’s reputation for competence to be turned to tatters. Fianna Fáil’s key bailiwicks: Education, Health and Housing might offer more opportunity for creating lasting legacies as well as higher risk, but fire fighting COVID has left little room for that. While Fine Gael’s “base” comprises mainly those who prefer to keep their Euro in their pockets than cede them to the state, the party is beginning to whisper sweet, expansive smooth talk about housing programmes and health services too, hoping to stretch the bases it covers.

Anyway, over the past 15 months, including the past year of shared government, Fine Gael has enjoyed a healthy double digit lead over Fianna Fáil as the leading establishment party. Can Fianna Fáil make up that ground?

Over the past 40 years, Fianna Fáil’s trajectory has gone from being a credible candidate to be a single-party government and in government most of the time since 1932, to being by far the dominant party within stable coalition governments from 1989, to almost total collapse in 2011. Micheál Martin’s achievement was to revive it by raising its seat tally from 20 to 44 in 2016 thus re-establishing its credentials to lead a government in 2020. If Fianna Fáil is reduced to presenting itself as merely a potential participant in, rather than leader of government next time, where is the sizzle in that?

What would be its proverbial “unique selling proposition” if it is trailing far behind Fine Gael?

One implication of where the tea leaves sit now is that Fianna Fáil is a lot less likely to rule out participation in government with Sinn Féin as definitively as it did last year. By contrast, Fine Gael may be more tempted to keep a hard line to emphasise the contrast between themselves (safe pairs of incorruptible hands) and Sinn Féin (radical, sulphurous and inexperienced) — though I suspect they will not close down that option altogether.

So, Fine Gael are vying with Sinn Féin to emerge from the election as the largest party. But around 30% of the vote will leave them no easy path to forming a government either. Under the cosh of COVID, the national interest case for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to come together in government last year was strong. It will be harder for Fianna Fáil to do the same as the clearly junior party next time, even if it won’t be especially easy for it to stay out of such a government either.

However, long term political forecasts are even more dangerous than meteorological ones. If Paddy Power is right, the election is 3–4 years away.

In one year’s time, Michael Martin will step down as Taoiseach and probably also as leader of Fianna Fáil. It’s hard to see that changing the present dynamic much. Paddy Power has Jim O’Callaghan as favourite to replace him at 11/8 and Michael McGrath next at 11/4, both more lugubrious and worthy than upbeat and inspiring. Incidentally, the first eight places in that betting are occupied by men before we get to Norma Foley at 18/1.

More important, we will surely have moved into the post-pandemic era. The fate of all the government parties will depend on how well they shape public perceptions of their priorities then, between the inevitable paying for and mopping up after COVID and the more forward looking tasks of rejuvenating and reshaping a frayed and jaded country.