Let’s face it, Ireland has always been a bit of an outlier in its politics compared with other European countries. That may prove to be the case again when voters go to the polls on Friday to elect the 34th Dáil.
2024 has been described as a year of ejection elections. Incumbency has become an intolerable liability, including in the USA where Kamala Harris was unable to distance herself sufficiently from the burden of the Biden administration’s perhaps-undeserved unpopularity.
If opinion polls are anything to go by, Ireland may be an exception. There is a very real prospect of a government that was in power during the pandemic and its economically-fraught aftermath being re-elected. Thus, Simon Harris and Micheál Martin may elude the fate doled out by their electorates this year to Emmanuel Macron, Rishi Sunak and other serving governments.
Look at the peculiarity of Irish political history. Born in civil war, the Free State might easily have fallen prey to the authoritarian demons that gobbled up European democracies in the late-1920s and 1930s.
Ireland did change course in 1932, electing Eamon de Valera who turned out to be reliably conservative in a middle-of-the-road sort of way. A man of authority yes, but firmly anchored in democratic values.
Having thus changed political horses, Irish voters kept Fianna Fáil in power for an unbroken 16 years throughout the crisis-ridden ‘30s and ‘40s. It took a motley coalition to dislodge them in 1948 and even then they remained by far the biggest party in the Dáil, commanding 42% of the vote and falling just six seats short of retaining office.
The 1950s turned out to be politically unstable, with three changes of government in Dublin. That was hardly surprising considering the economic despair that gripped Ireland for much of that decade. 1957 ushered in another extended stretch of Fianna Fáil rule.
The sixties may have swung in other ways, but not in Irish politics. Fianna Fáil shifted from de Valera to Lemass to Lynch, but its vote never dipped below 43%.
If Fine Gael manages to be returned to government this week and serves a full term until 2029, the party will have enjoyed (if that’s the apt word these days) 18 unbroken years in office, and will beat Fianna Fáil’s longest innings.
Ireland has bucked the trend in terms of ideology too. There was no equivalent of the post-war European pattern of electoral competition between the centre-right and centre-left, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. Instead, two amorphous catch-all parties shared the spoils between them. Indeed, as late as 2007, FF and FG won 69% of the vote between them. On Friday, they would be thrilled to reach 50%
Across Europe, the past decade has seen a weakening of left-wing parties and the rise of far-right options. Oddly, Ireland has resisted that trend too in that Friday’s election will be contested by five parties that would be considered to be broadly of the left – Sinn Féin, Labour, Greens, Social Democrats, People Before Profit.
In 2020, those parties netted 41% of the total vote whereas even in the glory days of Dick Spring and Eamon Gilmore, the Labour Party never mustered more than 20%.
While there will be candidates standing on Friday with far-right credentials, none of the competing parties could fairly be put in that category. That again makes Ireland exceptional in today’s Europe.
Perhaps the most dramatic departure from the European mainstream lies in the success of independent candidates. They won 19 seats in 2020 and seem set to increase that number this time.
They tend to capitalise on public disenchantment and local discontents. It is an area where Ireland’s electoral system of multi-seat constituencies and the single-transferable vote comes into play. In a first-past-the-post system, an independent candidate can only rarely be expected to triumph.
Opinion polls have had a dodgy record in recent times. It may be that discontent with the incumbent government is not being properly measured and that the electorate has a backlash in store for them. After all, the polls failed to predict Sinn Féin’s poor performance in the European and local elections in June, although they were spot on ahead of the 2020 election.
If they have it right this time, Ireland will once again prove to be a political exception among the European democracies, a place where, against the odds in an age of rampant populism, the centre can hold.
Northern Ireland is, of course, the ultimate European outlier with neither right, left or centre able to make much of an impact on nationalist and unionist voting habits. Ireland north and south united - as electoral curiosities.
:: Daniel Mulhall is a former Irish Ambassador to the USA. His latest book is Pilgrim Soul: WB Yeats and the Ireland of his Time (New Island Books, 2023). He can be followed on X: @DanMulhall