ANALYSIS: The voters have confronted the opposition parties - and the party system - with fundamental challenges, writes Richard Sinnott
The electorate (or rather the 63 per cent of it that voted) has, in effect, re-elected the outgoing government (whether the two parties in question act on this mandate is a separate issue). This is the first time an Irish government has been re-elected in more than 30 years. In bringing this about, the voters have confronted the opposition parties (i.e., not just Fine Gael) and the party system more generally with fundamental challenges.
Let's begin with the party system. One of the main functions of political parties is to aggregate interests, that is to draw competing interests and ideas into overall packages that provide a basis for constructing a stable parliamentary majority and for presenting alternative choices to the electorate.
Fianna Fáil is a classic aggregator of interests, aka a "catch-all" party. Since the early 1980s this Fianna Fáil formula has not been enough to construct single-party governments and Fianna Fáil has had to turn to other parties. In this sense, coalition is an alternative way of aggregating interests, with the compromises being made between parties rather than within them.
The PD strategy in the election was to make this into a virtue and a core value. In the short term, at least, the parties that made up the last Government have come up with a solution to the aggregation problem, both from the point of view of party strategy and from the point of view of the potential to form a stable government.
The problems for the Opposition parties in this regard are much more fundamental. The inability of Fine Gael to present itself as the core of a discernible alternative government was a major source of the party's problems in the election.
According to the RTÉ/Lans-downe exit poll, only a little over one in three voters thought there was any alternative to a Fianna Fáil-led government. Part of the problem was that the party had been languishing in the low 20s in the long run-in to the election. But part of it is also due to problems of policy and leadership.
It will take some time to determine the weight of these factors in the decline of Fine Gael support. The complexity of the causes is indicated by the fact that, again according to the RTÉ/Lansdowne exit poll, one-third of Fine Gael defectors went to Fianna Fáil, one third to Labour and one third to the Independents, with only 4 per cent of them going to the PDs.
The only socio-demographic category that remained immune to the flight from Fine Gael was that of larger farmers, among whom support for Fine Gael remained an impressive 41 per cent.
Fine Gael's dilemma now is whether to seek to restore its former catch-all status and role as the fulcrum of any alternative government or to sharpen its identity and locate and occupy a (substantial) niche in the party system and in the hearts and minds of the electorate.
Fine Gael, it has to be acknowledged, is in a worse state now than it was in 1948. Then it had 19.8 per cent of the vote and 21 per cent of the seats. Now it has 22.5 per cent of the vote and 19 per cent of the seats. The difference is that then it was rescued by the Dáil arithmetic that enabled it to put together and lead the country's first coalition government.
Now the Dáil arithmetic makes it surplus to requirements. All of this gives rise to a dilemma because the catch-all route, while less realistic, promises greater status and avoidance of difficult choices. The niche route is more realistic, but involves abandoning Fine Gael's majority bent and settling for coalition alliances in which the party might or might not play the leading role. In going down this route, the party might even have to recognise that, in the medium term, coalition with Fianna Fáil might be the only route to power.
Part of Fine Gael's problem in 2002 lay in the refusal of the Labour Party to commit itself to an explicit transfer pact with Fine Gael. Though this might have had only a limited impact on saving seats for both parties by means of better inter-party transfers, it would have boosted the flagging credibility of the notion that there was an alternative to a Fianna Fáil-led government. There were undoubtedly good tactical reasons and perhaps good intra-party reasons for the decision to give a general indication of Labour's preference for getting the so-and-sos out, leaving the decision on transfers to the voters. In the event, however, the strategy did nothing for the Labour Party's performance in the election.
Because of the Fine Gael debacle, there has been only limited reference to Labour's poor performance. The fact remains, however, that the party's first-preference vote went down, it lost two major figures and remains more or less static in terms of seats. The argument that this was a good performance given the wind of change that swept through the party system is not convincing. Surely, the whole point about being the Labour Party is that when a wind of change blows it fills your sails and not those of other left-wing parties and Independents.
The problem of aggregation is most acute among the minor parties (other than the PDs) and the Independents. The only way for minor parties or Independents to achieve their policy objectives is to become part of or to support a coalition government. It seems unlikely that this option will be available.
The most effective means of exercising influence from the opposition benches in the Dáil involves forming alliances. This is especially so for the Independents, and attempts to form what would effectively be a party or parties from among them cannot be ruled out.
Of course, the big challenge for the existing or any new minor parties is how to "grow their vote" in the next election. Merger is one option but, in the light of the ideological identities involved, is unlikely. Competition is the alternative, competition with one another and with the larger parties. This will be fierce and, if the Labour Party in particular is to meet and beat it, it may have to relocate leftwards on the ideological spectrum that is now a more prominent feature of Irish politics.
One of the main messages from this campaign is a positive one for the democratic process. The message is that campaigns matter. This was apparent from general observation of the election. Moreover, the RTÉ/Lansdowne exit poll shows that over half the voters made up their minds after the campaign began and a quarter decided during the final week or on polling day. It shows that Fianna Fáil got the support of half those who entered the campaign with their minds made up but less than a third of those who decided in the last week.
Fine Gael failed to pick up any additional support among late deciders, whereas Labour, the Greens and especially the PDs did so. Measured against those who had decided before the campaign began, the PDs doubled their support among those who decided in the first two weeks of the campaign and trebled it among those who decided in the last week. The message here is that campaign appeals can have the desired effect, provided they are as incisive as the PD/McDowell intervention in campaign 2002.
This is an important message as we head into a new Dáil that will see an unprecedented level of political competition in which the parties will know that their capacity to communicate with the voters and, above all, their capacity to provide the electorate with credible alternatives, will determine their fate come the next election.
• Prof Richard Sinnott is director of the public opinion and political behaviour research programme at the Institute for the Study of Social Change in UCD