After all the debates, canvassing and opinion polls, the result in the presidential election was as expected and, at the same time, remarkable.
Independent TD Catherine Connolly romped home, winning 63 per cent of the vote, more than double the 29 per cent of her Fine Gael rival Heather Humphreys.
The polls predicted the winner but the margin was stunning.
Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin, whose name remained on the ballot paper, took 7 per cent, his party’s worst election performance.
READ MORE
And then there were the surprises. Turnout was higher than expected at 46 per cent, exceeding the 2018 presidential election, apparently driven in part by a successful campaign to encourage people to turn out to spoil their votes.
More than 213,000 people did so - spoiled votes came in at almost 13 per cent - multiples of the usual level, as huge number of voters expressed dissatisfaction at the limited choice of candidates on the ballot and the nature of the campaign.
Just 1 per cent of votes were spoiled in the 2018 presidential election.
The fallout from this result will reverberate for a considerable time.
Aside from Connolly, the clear winners from this election are the parties of the left. People Before Profit and the Social Democrats were part of the original Team Connolly and Labour leader Ivana Bacik pushed through her view that the party had to back Connolly against some strong opposition.
As political editor Pat Leahy writes, after a summer of indecision, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald “threw her party’s considerable campaigning weight behind Connolly. McDonald turned weakness into victory – that is what talented politicians do”.
“Sinn Féin’s declaration for Connolly turned into one of the turning points of the campaign. The broad left has been significantly strengthened – and Sinn Féin is the leader of the left.”
It is not hard to spot the losers.
For Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael this campaign and result has brought nothing but problems. Leahy describes it as the “greatest misjudgement of Micheál Martin’s leadership. That cannot be without consequences.”
Fine Gael is a big loser too. While not as spectacular a failure as its Government partners “it’s an awful day for leader Simon Harris and his party”, writes Leahy.
A standout from the result was the extent to which those advocating for people to spoil their votes succeeded.
“They did not have a single message – beyond being unhappy with the choice of candidate offered to them – but taken together they are a minority that cannot be ignored,” writes Leahy.
As for the future, it remains to be seen how Connolly transitions from candidate to president.
Leahy writes: “Will she be able to promote her ideas and principles – the desire for a ‘new Republic’ that animated her campaign – in a way that avoids conflict with the Government? Or is a new chapter in the presidency about to be written? That is for the future. For now, she can savour a famous victory.”
Five key reads from the election
1 - Fintan O’Toole surveys Catherine Connolly’s emphatic win in the presidential election, writing that the next president was very fortunate with her opponents, but was also bold enough to make her own luck.
2 - What went wrong with the Heather Humphreys campaign? That’s the question at the heart of Ellen Coyne’s analysis this weekend.
3 - Órla Ryan delves into one key aspect of the Connolly campaign: successful use of social media.
4 - The “spoilyourvote” campaign was a unique and quite historic facet of this election. As Liz Carolan writes in the Opinion section, the battle to claim the narrative of what this diverse group of voters really meant is already emerging.
5 - Jack Horgan Jones looks inside the Connolly campaign and how she managed to gain cross-party support and energise the section of the electorate open to voting for her.
And on our Inside Politics podcast Hugh Linehan, Jack Horgan-Jones and Ellen Coyne discuss how did Connolly get her campaign so right and Fine Gael theirs so wrong?
As always, there is much more on irishtimes.com, including culture reviews, tips for the best restaurants and unrivaled sports coverage. There are plenty more articles exclusively available for Irish Times subscribers here
We value your views. Please feel free to send comments, feedback or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to feedback@irishtimes.com.
