The slow bicycle race to the next Irish election
At the end of June, for the first time in the life of the current Dáil, the bookmaker Paddy Power’s estimate of the odds of the major parties’ chances of winning the most seats at the next election remained unchanged compared to six months previously.
It offers odds of 1/5 against Sinn Féin leading the pack (implying a probability of 84%). Fine Gael are at 5/1 (17%) and Fianna Fáil at 10/1 (9%). If you have noticed that those probabilities add up to more than 100%, that “spread” is how bookmakers make an honest living. The rest are on offer at 100/1.
The stability of those odds sits well with the trend of published opinion polls over the first six months of 2023. Sinn Féin remain steady or becalmed, depending on your perspective, towards the lower end of the 30–35% range. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are clustered at around 20% each. It is possible to argue that Fine Gael have been on a mildly downward trend towards that figure with Fianna Fáil support remaining broadly more stable.
Recurring public polls are produced by Ipsos/MRBI for The Irish Times, Ireland Thinks for The Sunday Independent, Red C for The Business Post and Behaviour and Attitudes for The Sunday Times. Each has its own methodology to a degree that influences its results and makes direct comparison with the others something of a fool’s game. If you enjoy reading political tealeaves more closely, the independent website Irish Polling Indicator[i] aggregates the polls. As of 18 June, it was projecting Sinn Féin support at 32.5% with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil at 19.5%. By 2 July, those estimates had shifted slightly. Sinn Féin have eased to 31.5%. Fianna Fáil has edged up to 20%. Fine Gael remains on 19.5%.
Sinn Féin’s support is significantly higher than the 24.5% poll it achieved in the 2020 election. At that election, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil polled 22.2% and 20.9% respectively, so their support might fairly be said to have suffered some subsidence rather than collapsed altogether. The fall in support for the Greens is proportionately more serious — from 7.1% in 2020 to around 4% now.
Among the smaller parties, Labour, the Greens and the Social Democrats are clustered at around 4%. The Social Democrats may have their noses slightly in front for now, having enjoyed an immediate boost since the election of its new leader, Holly Cairns, in March, although its ratings have slipped back a bit since.
Because of Ireland’s increased population, 171–181 seats will be contested at the next general election which must take place by March 2025. Based on the present 160 seat Dáil, the polls would translate to roughly 60 seats for Sinn Féin and around 35 each for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
So we are, more or less, as we were at the beginning of the year. Sinn Féin is in pole position to lead the next government but is a long way short of an overall majority. Fine Gael continues to distance itself from possible participation in a coalition with Sinn Féin while Fianna Fáil is more open to it than it was in 2020. For a stable government, Sinn Féin will probably need Fianna Fáil to sign up. Even if all three of Labour, the Social Democrats and the Greens allied with Sinn Féin, they would still be short of a majority.
There is still a possibility of the present government having the numbers to return to office. But, we must remember that the current coalition is a marriage of convenience, promulgated to make up the numbers back in 2020, rather than one of strong like-mindedness and compatibility. Would the three parties want to present themselves to the electorate as a united front seeking a renewed mandate? I doubt that the individual parties would want to box themselves in like that anyway, but especially as the odds seem against them renewing their majority even if they did.
Strictly speaking, the next government does not need an absolute majority of Dáil seats to be reasonably safe. The next Dáil will continue to contain a substantial cohort, probably running into double figures, of “sole trader” Independents, whose primary interest is in holding on to their seats rather than in promoting specific policies — so they will be slow to trigger the downfall of a government.
Paddy Power is offering odds of 7/2 against an election occurring this year and 15/8 against one in 2024. The bookmaker believes this government is likely to run all the way to 2025 offering odds of only 4/5 against an election that year. The odds against an election this year or next are unchanged compared to last December. The odds then against an election in 2025 have eased slightly from 5/6.
We are all at the mercy of events but, right now, Paddy Power seems to be calling the timing sensibly — for several reasons.
First and most important, this government looks stable. There are few signs of internal stresses and strains that might eventually lead to an implosion and its Dáil majority looks reasonably robust.
Second, the polls do not indicate that any of the government parties could count on coming out of the election with more seats than they had going into it. So, unless they believe they are likely to become more unpopular in the meantime, they might as well hang in there.
Third, although it is nominally at the sole discretion of the Taoiseach to seek a dissolution of the Dáil, in practice I suspect he would only do so with the tacit agreement of the leaders of the other two parties in government. That need for a tripartite consensus in favour of jumping makes waiting around more likely.
Fourth, there is a high risk that voters would be sceptical of an outgoing government with a reasonably solid majority that “cuts and runs” rather than waiting until time or a robust pretext makes an election necessary.
In any event, all parties have less than two years to attempt to shape the political weather in their own favour. It seems more likely now that the current leaders will be the ones that will front up for their parties at the election. I imagine that there are more reservations in Fine Gael about having Leo Varadkar bear their standard than exist in Fianna Fáil about Micheál Martin leading their charge. Mary Lou McDonald is untouchable.
However, only a fortnight ago, Ryan Tubridy was untouchable too.
Speculation continues to bubble that Mr. Martin might jump ship for a proverbial “big job” in Europe before the election, possibly as a replacement for Ireland’s current EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness. I find it hard to imagine that Mr. Martin would diminish his reputation by leaving his party “in the lurch” so close to an election, having so firmly and frequently renewed his public commitment to lead it into that election. But stranger things have happened.
Unforeseen events will influence the ebb and flow of voter preferences between now and the election being called and unanticipated slippery banana skins can present themselves during the campaign itself. In 2020, Fine Gael’s serene horizon was disrupted by an eruption of unexpected public hostility to a planned service of centenary commemoration for members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police, a tone-deaf idea encouraged by few but disliked by many.
As the election draws nearer too, what were previously inconsequential expressions in voters’ minds of casual preferences may change in their translation into firm voting intentions. For example, before the last election in February 2020, it was only when an election began to loom large late in 2019 that Sinn Féin’s support started to rise from the mid-teens to its eventual election poll of 24.5%, largely at the expense of Fine Gael.
Nationwide local and European elections in June next year may concentrate voters’ minds beforehand and politicians’ minds afterwards as well as disrupting conventional wisdom about the general election itself.
I am not going to be so foolish as to predict the outcome of the election, but I will venture these speculative thoughts.
First, if the numbers stay as they are, we can expect a long wait between the election and the formation of a government. In 2020, this interval exceeded four months.
Second, the polls do not suggest that we will see a “watershed” election where all is changed, changed utterly. Based on the steadiness of polls since the last election, some gains for Sinn Féin and losses for the “civil war” parties seem baked in. But they don’t look to be on a scale that will “sweep” Sinn Féin immediately and easily into government or reduce Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to rubble.
Indeed, the polls may be misleading. Mid-term polls in most democracies tend to overstate support for opposition parties who have only to talk a decent game; complain about most things the government is doing and promise about how much better they would do things — and to understate support for the government whose hands are always steeped in the dirt of difficult decisions likely to annoy as many as they please.
Third, the “change” that will be in the air at the next election will be less about how things might be done differently than about who will be doing whatever things are to be done. By March 2025, Fine Gael will have been in government continuously for 14 years. Fianna Fáil will have been in government or supporting the government continuously since 2016. Indeed, even though Fianna Fáil will bear the political scars of having “crashed” the economy during the Celtic Tiger era, they will have been in outright opposition for only five years during this century. Voters are tiring of the incumbent players as much as they might be of their policies.
Sinn Féin carry the immense credentials of being an entirely new broom, fresh rather than stale, untainted by previous office and with the energy and enthusiasm to harness the system to their purposes rather than be enslaved by it, more attuned to opportunities than obstacles — or so they would like to present themselves. My sense is that the needle of the political dial is shifting modestly rather than dramatically towards those with an appetite to dream dreams and say “Why not?” and away from those who seem resigned to the inevitability of things being stuck as they are.
But finally, it seems likely that the next government will be a coalition. Maybe not a shotgun wedding, but another marriage of convenience rather than passion. So, zeal and mission will be diluted by compromise and managerialism.
Nonetheless, it will still be a choice between “Stick to Nurse for fear of something worse.” and “It’s time to escape from Nurse’s apron strings.”. At the moment, it looks more likely that Nurse will be out of a job — unless Sinn Féin take the longer view, contrive credible cover to stand back from government formation, force Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael together again and hope the needle of destiny swings further their way.
