Counts in the local elections are ongoing around the country – and will be for quite some time.
There will be no hard numbers for the European elections until late on Sunday. However, we have sufficient information from both counts and tallies to say that this has been a remarkable day in Irish politics – and one which changes our perception of where things stand politically.
Here are five things that we learned on day one of the count.
1. The centre is holding, more or less
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will lose council seats, it’s true. Both parties accept that. But they are losing from a relatively high base, having performed strongly in the 2019 election. Fine Gael looks to be having a very good day in Dublin, especially in the middle-class heartlands. In the home patch of Paschal Donohoe – Ireland’s most ardent advocate for the virtues of the political centre – Fine Gael looks set to beat Sinn Féin, whose local champion is Mary Lou McDonald. It’s hard to overstate the symbolism of that.
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[ As it happened: Day one of the local and European election countsOpens in new window ]
It is not clear who will be the largest party, either in terms of share of the vote or in council seats. Fine Gael reckons it has the edge. Either way, there won’t be much in it. Whatever happens, it won’t be Sinn Féin. If you had said that six months ago – even three months ago – nobody would have believed you.
2. And the left-of-centre is holding too
The Green Party were bracing themselves for a massacre; instead, it looks like they will get away with a humane cull.
Like Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the Greens will lose seats. But not all of them. While the party will feel the pressure on Sunday and could still lose both its European Parliament seats, it is not going to have the sort of wipeout that some feared and, had it transpired, would have destabilised the Government.
It will show the Greens that, although governing is difficult and takes a toll, there is still a large number of people who are concerned about climate change and are open to hearing their message. That counts as not a bad day, all in all.
Elsewhere on the centre-left, the Labour Party seems to be confirming impressions during the campaign that it was showing signs of life, while the Social Democrats can expect to make some gains. It is hard to say, at this stage, whether any of these will be significant, but it does seem that the non-Sinn Féin centre-left parties – who once looked as if they were going to be steamrollered by the McDonald juggernaut – are fighting their corner tenaciously.
3. There was disappointment for Sinn Féin
There is no getting away from the fact that Sinn Féin’s disappointment, some gains notwithstanding, is the most arresting development of the day. It seems to be worse than they feared – suggesting a decline even in the last week or 10 days of the campaign, with too many candidates compounding the problems.
Estimates of the party’s share of the national vote are knocking around the mid-teens, while a tally of the four Dublin local electoral areas had the party as low as 11 per cent. If that is borne out on Sunday, it suggests that the widely assumed Dublin European Parliament seat could be jeopardy. An evenly split but not high enough share of the vote in Midlands-North-West could endanger the party’s seat there too. These outcomes remain possibilities rather than probabilities. But they show that things could get worse for Sinn Féin.
4. It was a good day for Independent candidates
Where Sinn Féin has faltered, Independents have prospered. And while it does not make sense to think of Independents as a single political group, if you did, they’d be the biggest in the country.
Some far-right Independents are in the hunt for council seats, but there is no electoral breakthrough of any significance for truly far-right forces. Right-of-centre Independents who are prepared to take migration-sceptic positions, or are campaigning against local accommodation centres for asylum seekers, appear to be prospering in many places.
5. Irish politics displays one characteristic above all: volatility
The cratering of Sinn Féin support has been pretty astonishing; but remember the last general election, when support suddenly and unexpectedly swung behind the party.
Lots of voters, untethered to ancestral political loyalties, swing around between parties with a promiscuity that would make their forefathers blush. It makes elections enormously unpredictable. And it means the campaigns matter more than ever.
Election Daily: The first winners and losers emerge
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