As the general election approaches, Sinn Féin is seeking to perform a high-wire balancing act as it finalises its slate of candidates around the country.
Mary Lou McDonald’s party ran too few candidates in 2020 to capitalise on an upswing in support during that election campaign.
It had 42 candidates with 37 elected and the party lost out on seats by not having enough people in the race. It vowed not to make the same error again.
Fast forward to the local elections in June this year, however, when the party ran 335 candidates; it won 102 seats – an improvement on its disastrous 2019 local election result – but still disappointing for a party that had been riding high in the polls for much of the last four years. Sinn Féin ran too many candidates and got burned again.
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The party’s strategists have not found the right balance in the last two big electoral tests and now the pressure is on as the country heads to the polls imminently, widely expected in late November or early December.
It all comes as Sinn Féin has seen its support levels fall in opinion polls for some time and as it scrambled to respond to multiple controversies over the past month.
So how many candidates will the party run in this year’s general election and what does it say about Sinn Féin’s election strategy?
A spokesman for the party said that the number of candidates would be “heading towards 70″.
As of this week, Sinn Féin has selected 59 – at least one candidate in all 43 constituencies, except Laois where it is yet to replace Brian Stanley, a sitting TD who quit the party earlier this month.
It seems certain that it will have fewer candidates than the other two big parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which have each already selected about 70 with more to follow. Both may end up with almost 80 candidates in the race.
Sources in Sinn Féin were sceptical about the level of return Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will get from this many candidates.
“How many of them are winnable seats?” one source asked.
But a similar question could be asked of Sinn Féin’s chances after its difficulties in recent weeks.
These include the furore over Sinn Féin’s former press officer Michael McMonagle who received job references from two Sinn Féin figures after he was ejected from the party and placed under investigation by police for child sex offences, to which he would later plead guilty.
McDonald has repeatedly expressed her “disgust” and “anger” at what happened.
She separately had to apologise over a different matter: the inappropriate texts sent by former Sinn Féin senator Niall Ó Donnghaile to a 16-year-old.
Meanwhile, Stanley and another TD – Patricia Ryan in Kildare South – left Sinn Féin amid their own respective disputes with the party. They are now running as independents posing a threat to Sinn Féin retaining the two seats.
Aside from these issues, Sinn Féin support had been falling in opinion polls for some time. It was down to 20 per cent in last month’s Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll – from a high of 36 per cent in July 2022.
Sinn Féin has made attempts to regain the initiative with high-profile launches of its housing proposals – an area where the Coalition is vulnerable – and an eye-catching €10 per day childcare plan.
Now it is grappling with the conundrum of how many candidates to run.
At present there are a number of larger constituencies where Sinn Féin is, as of now, only running one candidate, including four five-seaters where outgoing TDs are seeking to retain seats.
They are Galway West where Mairéad Farrell is seeking re-election, Kerry where the candidate is Pa Daly, Kildare North with Réada Cronin running, and Mayo where Rose Conway-Walsh is currently the lone candidate.
There are several four-seaters where the party currently has just one candidate. The possibility of adding more candidates to at least some of these larger constituencies has not been ruled out.
Local factors can play a part in the number of candidates a party will run in a given constituency, including whether or not it has been traditionally strong there.
The presence of strong independents such as Catherine Connolly in Galway West and the Healy-Raes in Kerry could also be a factor feeding into whether Sinn Féin would take a punt on seeking a second seat.
The Sinn Féin spokesman said: “Every constituency is its own little ecosystem. A successful electoral strategy has to reflect that.”
Nevertheless, running just one candidate in larger constituencies suggests a cautious approach from Sinn Féin.
There are four constituencies where the party currently has two sitting TDs – Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan, Louth and Dublin Mid-West. There remain just two candidates in all of these, though the possibility of adding to tickets has not been ruled out in these constituencies.
Could all of this indicate a lack of confidence in the party as it heads into the election?
“Absolutely not,” the Sinn Féin spokesman said. “This is about maximising the vote and returning as many Sinn Féin TDs as possible. That’s the strategy. The candidate selection will reflect that.”
Factors that will inform decisions on whether or not Sinn Féin will add candidates include who the competitors are in a constituency, upcoming opinion polls and feedback from party activists on the ground.
The strategy will be “agile” and the possibility of adding candidates in some constituencies could, as one source put it, “go right up to the wire”.
Parties can still add candidates even after the campaign has officially started and can nominate someone up to noon on the seventh day after the election writs are issued.
This will particularly be a consideration for Sinn Féin should it experience an uptick in support as happened during the 2020 race.
There will be analysis of all constituencies and where any candidates are added it will be “with a view to winning”, the same party source said.
They added that the party wants to be “in strongest position to be in government” while not putting existing seats at risk by adding candidates “that don’t have realistic chance”.
While Sinn Féin is taking a careful approach to candidate selection, sources speaking both publicly and privately still believe it can make gains.
The spokesman highlighted the “fluid” situation with undecided voters and insisted there is a chance for Sinn Féin to add to the 37 seats won in 2020.
Another party source said that if Sinn Féin returned to its 2020 level of support, it could “take seats we left behind”.
The fact that it is running two candidates in at least 17 constituencies this time – compared to just four where it had multiple candidates in 2020 – shows that it has the numbers in place to grow its Dáil strength.
That is, if it can turn around its current bad run of poll results and other challenges.
The same source said it is “hard to know” what the impact of the recent controversies will be saying there has been “wall-to-wall negative coverage” and it can be “very difficult to break through that”.
However, they said voters will choose a government based on who will address issues such as health, housing and childcare and suggested that, given the “significant role” of undecided voters, “a lot will hinge on the TV debates”.
Another source pointed to the 2020 experience when the party’s support surged in the weeks leading up to polling day and was among a number of Sinn Féin figures suggesting that this could happen again.
Of the party’s fortunes in recent times, the source added: “We’re no longer the front-runner; we’re no longer ‘the Sinn Féin juggernaut’.
“We’re now underdogs.”
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