Irish voters go to the polls today in the country’s general election. Ahead of the vote, Adrian Kavanagh provides a final look at the parties and the polling. Using a constituency level analysis of opinion polls, he illustrates how seat projections have changed since 2014, noting that a late swing in the polling means the governing parties, Fine Gael and Labour, could struggle to have enough support to return to power

Kavanagh, Adrian

LSE Research Online

2/26/2016The 2016 Irish general election: a ﬁnal look at the parties and thepollingblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/02/26/the-2016-irish-general-election-a-ﬁnal-look-at-the-parties-and-the-polling/Irish voters go to the polls today in the country’s general election. Ahead of the vote, AdrianKavanagh provides a ﬁnal look at the parties and the polling. Using a constituency level analysis ofopinion polls, he illustrates how seat projections have changed since 2014, noting that a late swingin the polling means the governing parties, Fine Gael and Labour, could struggle to have enoughsupport to return to power.The 2016 Irish general election campaign is now over and voters will head to the polls today,marking the end of what has been probably both the longest-ever and shortest-ever campaign in thehistory of the state. The campaign did not formally commence until 3 February, but it could be argued that partiesand candidates have been in election mode for well over a year – probably since the intensiﬁcation of the protestsagainst water charges in the autumn/winter of 2014 or even since the May 2014 Local and European elections.Polling trends in the ﬁnal days of the campaign suggest that the outgoing government parties – Fine Gael and theLabour Party – are likely to lose a number of seats in Dáil Éireann, with the junior coalition partner, Labour, facing astruggle in each one of the constituencies that they are defending seats in.The electoral system and seat projectionsAs last year’s general election in the United Kingdom showed, predicting election results on the basis of opinionpolls can be fraught with danger, especially in “ﬁrst past the post” electoral systems that tend to skew seat levels perparty and award a disproportionate share of seats to certain political parties – usually the larger, or largest, parties.For instance, the Conservative Party won 50.8 per cent of the House of Commons seats in 2015 on a vote share ofjust 36.8 per cent.The Irish electoral system is a proportional electoral system, but it is a diﬀerent type of proportional system to the listsystems used in other states like Germany. The proportional element in the Irish system is based on preferentialvoting/transferable votes and multi-seat constituencies, however the relatively small number of seats assigned toIrish (Dáil) constituencies (between 3 and 5) means that parties/candidates need to win a fairly signiﬁcant share ofthe constituency vote to be in contention to win one of these seats in that constituency.Small parties (and independent candidates) can – and do – win seats in the Irish electoral system. This“Independents and Others” grouping currently accounts for 30 of the 166 seats in the outgoing Dáil, although thesenumbers have been inﬂated by defections from the larger parties. But smaller parties are usually only in contentionfor seats in their stronger areas (which will usually tend to cut across a small number of Dáil constituencies), whilethe size of the constituency in terms of seat numbers can often have a bearing too.Smaller parties often ﬁnd it easier to win seat in the “larger” 5-seat constituencies than in the “smaller” 3-seatconstituencies, as the percentage share of the vote needed to win a seat tends to be smaller in the 5-seatconstituencies. This is not as much of an issue for the independent candidates. Apart from some notable exceptions,the support bases of independent candidates tend to be very locally deﬁned, as envisaged in the “friends andneighbours voting” concept. Assuming that their main local support base is entirely found within the constituencyarea, independents often have as good a chance of winning seats in the 3-seat constituencies as in 4-seat/5-seatconstituencies.1/4Predicting the outcomeGiven this system, the party/political grouping support levels indicated in opinion polls need to be viewed within theframework of the 40 Dáil constituencies being contested and their sizes (i.e. whether these are 3, 4 or 5 seatconstituencies). This task becomes even more challenging once boundary changes are factored in and particularlyfor the 2016 election, given that the 2012 Constituency Commission report brought in the most dramatic changes toIrish general election constituency boundaries since 1980, including an overall reduction in Dáil seat levels from 166to 158.Over the past years I have tried to tease out what certain opinion poll trends/ﬁgures might mean in terms of potentialDáil seat levels by applying a model based around a constituency-level analysis of the polling ﬁgures. This modelidentiﬁes the national swing towards/away from a political party/political grouping relative to their support levels inthe previous (2011) general election. This national swing is then applied to the 2011 support levels for each politicalparty/political grouping in each of the 40 Dáil constituencies to produce constituency-level support estimates for eachof these parties/groupings.Given that swings to/from diﬀerent parties/groupings tend to vary geographically at elections, these estimates shouldnot be understood as being 100 per cent accurate constituency predictions. However based on these constituency-level support estimates, the likely distribution of seats in a constituency is teased out with the sole purpose ofcalculating an overall (national) estimate of Dáil seat-levels for each of the larger political parties (Fine Gael, FiannaFáil, Sinn Féin and Labour) and the Independents and Others grouping. Figure 1 below illustrates the results.Figure 1: Dáil seat estimate trends for possible coalitions based on an analysis of opinion polls (2015-16)Note: The chart shows combined Dáil seat estimate trends for Fine Gael-Labour and FiannaFáil-Sinn Féin, as well as the Independents and Others grouping, based on constituency-levelanalyses of opinion polls carried out between December 2014 and February 2016.Figure 1 illustrates some interesting trends over this period. In December 2014, combined support levels for the twogovernment parties, Fine Gael and Labour, suggested that they were unlikely to even come close to the number ofDáil seats (79, if the Ceann Comhairle – speaker of the house – is not included) required to have a bare majority in2/4the next Dáil.This period came at the end of a number of setbacks for these parties during 2014, including a number of signiﬁcantlosses at the 2014 Local and European elections and the political fall-out of the water charges protests in late 2014.A potential coalition involving the main opposition parties (Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil) and members of theIndependents and Others grouping seemed more likely at this point. However, as evidence of an economic recoveryin the Republic of Ireland intensiﬁed during 2015, support levels for the government – and particularly for Fine Gael– improved and by the end of the year a return to power for the coalition government was becoming a more likelyprospect.Figure 2: Dáil seat estimate trends for parties/groupings based on an analysis of opinion polls (2015-16)Note: The chart shows combined Dáil seat estimates trends for the larger political parties andthe Independents and Others grouping, based on constituency-level analyses of opinion pollscarried out between August 2015 and February 2016.The government parties, however, failed to carry this momentum into the early months of 2016, with this loss ofmomentum also carrying on into the oﬃcial general election campaign. The common wisdom had been that – asvoters became more focused on the formation of the next government – the Independent and Others grouping mighthave become “squeezed out” as voters focused more on the competition between the larger parties. But support forthis grouping has actually hardened as the campaign has developed and as support has ebbed away from thegovernment parties.The last opinion poll published before the campaign started – the Sunday Business Post-Red opinion poll of 31January – estimated a combined support level of 39 per cent for the government parties, but this had fallen toaround the 35 per cent level in the last few opinion polls of the campaign. Barring a late swing to Fine Gael andLabour, the coalition government looks unlikely to return to power – either as a majority government or as a minority3/4government with support from smaller parties/groupings, such as Renua, the Social Democrats, the Green Party orthe Independent Alliance, and/or individual independent Dáil deputies. There has also been a late swing towardsFianna Fáil evident in the ﬁnal opinion polls of the February 2016 campaign, while at the same time there has beena late swing away from Sinn Féin.Mainly due to the continued strength of the Independents and Others grouping, there appears to be a limited numberof potential two-party coalition options. Fine Gael and Sinn Féin could well muster enough seats between them toreach the 79-Dáil seat target, but such a coalition appears to be highly unlikely for ideological reasons. By contrast,Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil between them would appear likely to have enough seats to command a comfortablemajority in the next Dáil and the ideological/policy diﬀerences between these parties are not especially strong.But there are reasons why such a grand coalition may not emerge. Having observed the tendency for junior coalitionpartners to suﬀer in subsequent general elections, Fianna Fáil may be reluctant to enter into coalition with Fine Gaelif they have a notably smaller number of seats relative to Fine Gael. Fianna Fáil would also be concerned that thiscould see them lose ground to Sinn Féin, who would become the main opposition party if such a grand coalition wasto be formed. There is also notable hostility amongst ordinary party members to the idea of entering into a coalitionwith Fine Gael.At this stage, it seems likely that the shape of next Irish government will not be known immediately after the end ofcounting across the weekend, bar a late, and sizeable, swing towards the government parties. The only certainty, asof now, is uncertainty.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article is also crossposted at the author’s blog on Irish elections. The article gives the views of the author,and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. Featuredimage credit: Marcus Rahm (CC-BY-SA-2.0)Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1oDJXbD _________________________________About the authorAdrian Kavanagh – Maynooth UniversityAdrian Kavanagh is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University.4/4

The 2016 Irish general election: a final look at the parties and the polling

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