Irish General Election 2016: Political uncertainty on the menu

Well, this is one of those situations where a story is going to run and run and run, and who knows what the outcome will be at the end of it. 

We still have 13 seats unfilled at this point, and no partty has got even 50 seats.  Here's the state of play.

Fine Gael - 46 - Still the largest party, but with a lot less seats this time.
Fianna Fail - 42 - Much improved performance.
Sinn Fein - 22 - Best performance ever.
Independents - 15 - The big unknown factor in this equation.
Labour - 6 - They need one more seat to hold onto their speaking privileges.
Anti-Austerity Alliance - 5 - Could be one of the keys to government for FF and FG.
Independent Alliance - 4 - Another unknown here, but definitely not to be ignored.
Social Democrats - 3 - These guys made a good start, but now they have to work as TDs
Green Party - 2 - Back in the Dail, and we'll see how that goes.

Renua Ireland was the higest profile party not to get a seat. 

The Labour Party in Ireland, could be going through their own Liberal Democrat moment.  Joan Burton could become like Nick Clegg.  They've suffered a big loss at the polls, and Joan Burton's future as leader is hanging by the proverbial thread. 

But even Fine Gael might not be in the clear yet.  Dependent on how things go in coalition negotiations, the future of Enda Kenny's leadership may also be in question.

All in all, this story still has a long way to run, and expect Dublin's ISEQ to be significantly down on Monday, as markets hate uncertainty.

Irish General Election 2016: Into Day 3

Day 1 was the day the votes were cast.  Day 2 was when the counting began.  Now we're into Day 3 of this, and we do have the first preference counts from all 40 consituencies, so now we know what the official share of the first preference vote is, and it goes like this...

Fine Gael - 25.5% - 10.6% lower than in 2011
Fianna Fail - 24.3% - 6.9% higher than in 2011
Sinn Fein - 13.8% - 3.9 higher than in 2011
Independents - 13.0% - 0.4% higher than in 2011
Labour - 6.6% - 12.8% lower than in 2011
Independent Alliance - 4.2% - New party in this election.
Anti-Austerity Alliance - 3.9% - Wasn't in this current form in 2011.
Social Democrats - 3.0% - New party in this election.
Green Party - 2.7% - 0.9% higher than in 2011
Renua Ireland - 2.2% - New party in this election.
Others - 0.7% - 2.0% lower than in 2011

So what do these figures tell us?  Well, first of all, it tells us the governing parties of Fine Gael and Labour took a spanking at these elections, both losing significant share of the first preference vote.  Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein do look to be the big winners, both making significant gains on their 2011 position.  But ultimately Fianna Fail must be disappointed.  They must have felt they had a chance to overtake Fine Gael, as the tide seemed to slowly turn against the governing parties.  But they didn't quite capitalise on it.

However it must be said, they did far better than the opinion polls suggested.  In fact, in the run up, the opinion polls were way off.

Date	Source/Link	Polling Agency	FG	Lab	FF	SF	AAA -PBP	RI	SD	GP	Others
26 February 2016	General election	N/A	25.5	6.6	24.3	13.8	3.9	2.2	3.0	2.7	17.9
26 February 2016	RTÉ[p 1]	Behaviour & Attitudes	24.8	7.1	21.1	16.0	4.7	2.4	3.7	3.6	16.6
26 February 2016	The Irish Times[p 2]	Ipsos MRBI	26.1	7.8	22.9	14.9	3.6	2.3	2.8	3.5	16.1
25 February 2016	TheJournal[p 3]	DIT	32	8	20	15	2	2	4	2	14
23 February 2016	Paddy Power[p 4][p 5]	Red C	30	7	20	15	3	2	4	3	16[nb 2]
22 February 2016	The Irish Times[p 6]	Ipsos MRBI	28	6	23	15	3	2	3	2	18[nb 3]
21 February 2016	Sunday Independent[p 7][p 8]	Millward Brown	27	6	23	19	5	2	4	2	14[nb 4]
21 February 2016	The Sunday Business Post[p 9][p 10]	Red C	30	8	18	16	3	2	4	4	15[nb 5]
21 February 2016	The Sunday Times[p 11][p 12]	Behaviour & Attitudes	30	4	22	15	5	3	3	3	15[nb 6]

This table came from Wikipedia, where I found all the polling data over the last 5 years, but I focused on the last week of the campaign.  Fine Gael's support was overestimated, quite significantly.  Sinn Fein's support was often over-estimated too.  Fianna Fail was underestimated, as were the others in this list, the Independents and the parties not listed in the polling data, including the Independent Alliance.

You can understand how disappointed Fine Gael feel, especially if they trusted this data to be accurate.  In some cases, the +/- 3.0% margin of error still left a gross over-estimation of support.

So, what does that mean in terms of seats?  Well seats are not filled by first preference votes alone in this election, but a number of Fianna Fail candidates did win on First preference votes alone, getting over the quota line without supplementaries.  Right now as I write this, 95 of the 158 have been filled, and the state of play is this.

Fine Gael - 28
Fianna Fail - 28
Sinn Fein - 13
Independents - 10
Labour - 4
Anti-Austerity Alliance - 4
Independent Alliance - 4
Social Democrats - 3
Green Party - 1
Renua Ireland - 0
Others - 0

Doing some quick percentage maths, that means that currently, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are on course to win 47 seats each.  Not even 50 seats.  I actually expect them to make the 50 seat level but just barely.  I think a few more seats could go to the minor parties, Sinn Fein and Labour, and maybe a couple more Independents, but it's difficult to know exactly how many will go to which party. 

What we do know is that it's squeaky bum time.  Every seat declaration today will be watched with great interest as both Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin will be trying to work out who they can do deals with to secure a majority, and ultimately, whether they could work out a deal with each other to keep Sinn Fein out of power.

Irish General Election 2016: On the Nightbeat.

At this point in proceedings we're still missing 2 first counts out of the 40 constituencies, but a clearer picture is starting to emerge.  As I write this, these are the numbers of TD's elected per party.

Fianna Fail - 18
Fine Gael - 12
Sinn Fein - 6
Social Democrats - 3
Independents - 3
Anti-Austerity Alliance - 2
Independent Alliance - 2
Labour - 1
Green Party - 1
Renua Ireland - 0
Others - 0

That's with 48 of the 158 seats filled in Dail Eireann.

By contrast, Dublin Central is on its 10th round of counting, in order to try to fill the remaining 2 available seats.

The strange thing is, that at the start of this election, there were a lot of concerns about the new party Renua.  How were they going to shake things up?  Turns out, they really haven't, with a mere 2.2% of first preference votes. 

The big developments came from Sinn Fein, and on a more modest scale, the Social Democrats, the Anti-Austerity Alliance, and the Independent Alliance.  All have made significant progress.  The Green Party have returned to the Dail, though whether they will pick up any more seats at this election is at this point dubious, but not impossible.

If there is to be a coalition, it's likely to be a grand coalition of at least 3 different parties and maybe more.  Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have said they won't work with Sinn Fein, so it will depend on just how close Fianna Fail and Fine Gael get to 80 seats, the number required for a majority, but the strongest likelihood seems to be a Fianna Fail/Fine Gael coalition, if neither party is anywhere near close enough to the 80 seat mark.

Once we know the exact shape or close enough to it, to actually have a good sense of the numbers, I'll write more about this. 

Meanwhile, one small point on this.  The polls closed at 10pm last night.  They didn't start counting, until 9am this morning.  That's 11 hours that was lost.  This whole process could be almost over by this point, if they had started counting last night straight after the polls close, as we do. Instead right now, we're heading into a late night, and the possibility of results not being known until Sunday evening.  And even then, when the markets open Monday morning in Dublin, the ISEQ will probably go downwards as there will be little idea what kind of political future will await the Irish Republic.  I do think we're in for a few days, maybe weeks of political uncertainty, at a time when Ireland's relationship with both the UK and the EU, will be under a lot of scrutiny on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Irish General Election 2016: Saturday Evening Roundup

Okay, as I write this, this is the state of the parties right now.

Fine Gael: 3
Labour : 0
Fianna Fail: 12
Sinn Fein: 2
Social Democrats: 3
Independent Alliance: 2
Independents: 1

Turnout for this election was a paltry 65%, which to my view is pathetic.  7 out of every 20 people in Ireland didn't even do their duty by voting in this election.

We've had 28 first ballot counts in out of the 40 constituencies, but only Laois constituency has completed counting and elected all their required representatives, in their case, 3.

Sean Fleming - Fianna Fail
Brian Stanley - Sinn Fein
Charlie Flanagan - Fine Gael

The share of the first preference vote for the various parties at this time looks like this:

Fine Gael: 26.1%
Fianna Fail: 25.1%
Sinn Fein: 12.6%
Independents: 10.7%
Labour: 6.9%
Anti-Austerity Alliance: 4.5%
Independent Alliance: 4.4%
Social Democrats: 3.9%
Green Party: 2.9%
Renua Ireland: 2.1%
Others: 0.8%

We've still got a long way to go before we get even a clear indication of what is happening here, but so far, it looks like Fine Gael may have held a little more ground than we initially though, but Fianna Fail is definitely gaining ground.

At this point, the former Taniaste Joan Burton of Labour, stands a fair chance of holding her seat, she is currently third after the 3rd count, with only one seat out of the four currently filled.  It depends on how the supplementary votes for the winning candidate will be dividied up in the next count.

Another update later.

Irish General Election: Saturday Afternoon Roundup

Well, we've only had one seat filled, which has gone to Fine Gael's Sean Barrett.  But all indications from the tallies that we've been getting via twitter and live blogs, seem to suggest that there are some significant changes on the way in Irish Politics.

Most of the first counts are expected between about  4pm and 7pm, with either eliminated candidates, or those who pass the 'quota', that is to say the minimum number of votes required to win a seat in the constituency, which is different depending on constituency size and turnout, their 'supplementary votes', votes of the other preferences below first preference, will then be counted to help determine who else is elected from that constituency. 

It is a complex and slightly esoteric system of electing a parliament, but it's that kind of quirkiness that gives it its appeal, in my eyes.  The Single Transferable Vote system allows for a less predictable election result, especially in situations like this where you have multiple parties, and multiple candidates sometimes from the same party, battling over a limited number of seats.

The Single Transferable Vote would be quite workable here in the UK too, as it could be made to work in single seat constituencies.  The quota just becomes a straight 50% +1 vote of the total number of votes cast, and candidates would be eliminated from the bottom upwards, until we got a candidate over that threshold.

So, the declarations will shortly actually begin, and we'll get official word on who has actually been elected.  More on this later.

Irish General Election 2016: The Exit Poll.

Well, it's not long now until the counting actually begins in the election.  Counts begin at 9am, but at 7am, on a special Saturday edition of Morning Ireland on RTE Radio 1 and RTE News Now, RTE released the result of their exit poll.

A small reminder that these are first preference votes that are asked about, as the system of voting is Single Transferable Vote, which ranks candidates by preference.

Fine Gael, who were the largest party in 2011 with 36.1, have lost almost a third of their previous vote, to now be at 24.8%.  This still makes them the largest party, but with a much reduced vote.  Second place goes to Fianna Fail, which has increased their vote from 17.4% in 2011, to 21.1% in this exit poll. 

Sinn Fein have made a huge gain in this election, from 9.9% in 2011, to 16% in this exit poll. 

Independents make up the 4th largest group this time around with 11%.  Labour, who were coalition partners in 2011 with a huge 19.4% of the vote, have dropped down to 5th place this time with just 7.1% in this exit poll.

This means we could be looking at a Fine Gail/Fianna Fail coalition, which would have been unthinkable in any prior government before, with Sinn Fein being the leaders of the opposition.  The equivalent in the UK, would be a Labour/Conservative coalition. 

I do think there might be some resistance to the idea of a Fine Gael/Fianna Fail coalition, the idea of old enenmies working together might be too much to bear for some, but it does mean that we are in a new era for Irish politics.

And remember this poll was for first preference votes only.  How this translates down the line into seats is anyone's guess, due to the fact that the preferences below first preference are what will ultimately decide who gets elected, and who does not.

We'll keep an eye on the counting, which is starting shortly, and will post updates here on the blog during the day, and probably tomorrow as well, as we finally work out just how the Irish public have voted to fill the 157 seats in 40 constituencies that will make up the new Dail Eireann.