The Electoral Commission quietly published a fascinating piece of research last weekend. For years, academics who teach political science at Ireland’s universities have been (rightly) crying out for a proper, regular election study. Now the commission has finally obliged; sure, it will give the pointy-heads something to do over during the summer holidays.
There’s a lot in it. But here are a few things that jumped out at me about the state of our politics today.
1: Our democracy is in reasonable shape, but we shouldn’t get complacent
An overwhelming majority of Irish people (about nine in 10) believe that elections are conducted in accordance with the law, are well-managed, and that election officials are fair. Nearly all voters believe it is easy to vote and say they understand the process. And when the pollsters tested the voters’ knowledge of the system with a series of questions, large majorities answered them correctly.
Asked whether they thought the election was conducted fairly, 83 per cent said it was, with just 9 per cent saying it was unfair. People believe their vote is valuable, and feel they have a stake in elections. There’s a high degree of trust in institutions such as the judiciary and the Civil Service – and even, albeit to a lesser extent, in the Dáil and the Government.
Most people (70 per cent) believe their TDs are “generally competent and hardworking”, and they are strongly opposed to activities such as “following politicians and recording videos of them to post on social media”, and protesting outside their houses.
[ Lack of interest among reasons people did not vote in general electionOpens in new window ]
This widespread trust in our democracy is incredibly precious. All around the world, democracy is being challenged, and the processes and institutions which ensure people can sack their leaders are being undermined. Liberals fear electorates will give the “wrong” result; populists undermine protectors of the freedoms of the liberal state – the courts, the media, universities, civil society groups.
So our Irish democracy needs to be protected and tended to. The extremes in Ireland are not numerous, but they are not negligible, either. There are a lot of people who believe some pretty mad things – on none of the popular conspiracy theories do a majority say they believe them, but substantial minorities do. For example, 35 per cent of people believe that “a small secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics”; 19 per cent of people believe that “elected officials want to bring in obedient voters who will vote for them”. So there’s still work to be done here.
2: Fianna Fáil is in pretty good shape
Barely a decade and a half after its ultimate demise – or, at best, a slide into irrelevance – was being widely predicted, Fianna Fáil won a general election, and occupies the Taoiseach’s office for the second time since then. That recovery is possibly an understudied phenomenon, but no less remarkable for that.
The survey shows that among the four in 10 voters who feel “close to a party”, the largest proportion (34 per cent) feel close to Fianna Fáil, with Fine Gael trailing on 25 per cent and Sinn Féin on 22 per cent. This suggests the party has a cohort of loyal voters unlikely to desert it.
Asked about the probability of voting for parties in the future, respondents indicated Fianna Fáil leading the pack, while the party also had the lowest number of people saying it was improbable that they would vote for it. Taoiseach Micheál Martin is the most liked, and the least disliked, among the major party leaders.
Fianna Fáil also gets a decent spread of support from both disadvantaged and affluent voters, and all points in between. By contrast, both Labour and the Social Democrats’ support is both heavily skewed towards wealthier voters. Labour gets five and a half times more support from the most affluent voters than from the most deprived.
Irish politics is, we know, highly volatile – but it looks less volatile for Fianna Fáil than for the other parties.
3: The land of moderates and centrists
To my surprise, more people identified themselves as centre-right than centre-left. But it is clear that ours is a system dominated by moderates, who have a less negative view of politicians than you might think from our discourse, who trust traditional media more than new and social media, and who have a strong attachment to established norms and institutions. They are quite conservative on migration, pro-choice on abortion, and while on balance favouring a united Ireland, do not think it is remotely a priority when they vote in elections.
There is another related point. More than half (51 per cent) of people said that in general “the government” had done a good job since 2020, with 41 per cent saying it had done a bad job. For anyone looking at polls and observing our political and media discourse, this is a surprising finding.
Our political debate tends to be dominated by issues presented as failures of the Government. Think about it this way: how many stories in the media are essentially presented as the need for Government to do something urgently to fix some abject failing in public services? Quite a lot of them, right?
There was a good example this week with the debates on the failures in disabilities and autism services. I’m not for a minute saying there is anything misplaced about any of this. But the context in an election appears to be slightly different.
It seems that when, in an election campaign, people are asked to think about the Government and confronted with alternatives, they take a more rounded view. They are somewhat less negative than they might be in mid-term. That doesn’t mean we should discount mid-term unpopularity of governments – just that we should fully appreciate the context, and understand that things may well change before polling day.
