Irish general election result: status quo on shifting sands
3 December 2024
The main party leaders.
The recent elections in the Southern state have revealed a new state of play, which with some changes shows a strengthening of the two main bourgeois parties in terms of seats. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have 86 seats between them, just two shy of an overall majority. They have little need for the Green Party which was slaughtered and reduced to just one TD. Though both parties overall vote is down slightly in percentage terms compared to 2020.
The biggest losers of the day were ultimately Sinn Féin who lost almost 5 percentage points even though they managed to increase their seats by two. The decline in percentages was uneven throughout the country, with some areas remaining steady and others showing massive reductions in votes, such as Dublin North West and Dublin Central.
People Before Profit lost a number of seats, and Paul Murphy though he held onto his seat he just scraped in over the line. This was despite a slight increase in their vote. Independent left TD Joan Collins also lost her seat. One of the notable features of these campaigns and that of many other left candidates is that they were very watery, with socialism a strange word to find in their leaflets. They put forward proposals as if they were as social democratic formation that was going to lead the next government. So, it is not surprising that the actual Social Democrats increased their seats from 6 to 11 and percentage of first preferences from 2.9% to 4.81%. And the Labour Party also recovered from 6 seats to 11, though again in percentage terms the increase was slight going from 4.38% to 4.65%. Vote management by FF and FG helped them but so did the transfer pattern between the other main parties.
The other notable fact is that whilst right wing conservative groups such as Aontú or Independent Ireland have made some advances in the elections with Aontú now having two TDS and II four, the boot boys got nowhere. Gavin Pepper did best with 3.1%, followed by Steenson and Blighe at 2.5% and 2.4% respectively. A few others getting under 2% and the rest not even 1%. The far-right wave that was being predicted failed to materialise and in part due to the fact that Irish government adopted some of the measures and rhetoric of these groups, a fact referred to by former FG TD Ivan Yates in his role as electoral commentator and ultimately, whilst there may be some level of protest involved in voting for them, most people realise they do not have serious proposals and some of the councillors elected have proven themselves to be incompetent fools. However, many of these votes may have also gone to Aontú as according to the Irish Independent poll, 47% of their votes rated immigration as an important issue in determining their vote. Even at that it is a small percentage of voters.
The strategy of a left government is in tatters. Not only do they not have the numbers, PbP has been eclipsed by the SDs and even Labour, neither of whom want to even talk to Sinn Féin. They invested heavily in an electoral strategy, with vote for us to solve housing etc. The idea of other non-parliamentary work was discounted and now they have the fruits of their labour, which in terms of seats is a consolidation of the main capitalist parties and a revival or more traditional left reformist formations.