Irish General Election 2020: two-and-a-half party system no more?

ABSTRACT

Ireland’s General Election in February 2020 broke new ground from the moment it was called: it was the first to take place on a Saturday since the elections that led to the creation of the First Dáil over 100 years before. As in 1918, 2020 saw a decline in public trust of conservative parties, the rise of a more populist and radical force calling itself Sinn Féin, and the sidelining of the Labour Party.

Unlike the 1918 election, it failed to produce a definitive result in terms of Irish governance. While there were putative ‘winners and losers’, no party emerged as the ‘obvious’ choice for government. Instead, the electorate distributed seats almost evenly among three parties: Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael. Unusually for Ireland, no combination of any two would provide a parliamentary majority. Such is the fragmentation among the remaining seats that negotiating an agreement of three or more parties seems difficult.

At time of writing, no government has been formed, though what initially promised to be protracted talks may be accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever the eventual outcome, the disintegration of Ireland’s traditional two-and-a-half party system has continued amidst a significant political realignment.

KEYWORDS:

• Irish politics
• elections
• party systems
• electoral realignment

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Luke Field is a political scientist with primary research interests including democracy and representation, campaigns, political parties, democratic innovations, and emotions in politics. He recently completed a PhD at University College Dublin with the support of the Irish Research Council and currently teaches at University College Cork.

Notes

1 There were six TDs elected under the Independent Alliance banner in 2016; however, Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway) refused to support the Fine Gael-led minority government and left the grouping two weeks after the election of the new Government (Newstalk, 2016).

2 The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union led to the reallocation of its 73 European Parliament seats to its other members, two of which were to be given to Ireland (one in the South constituency and the other in the Dublin constituency). However, due to uncertainty over when and how (and, to an extent, whether) the UK would formally leave the EU, European elections took place in the UK as normal in May 2019; whether Ireland would receive its extra seats became contingent on the departure of the UK, in which case the highest-placed unsuccessful candidate in each of the constituencies would be deemed elected. These positions became known as the ‘Brexit’ or ‘cold storage’ seats (McCurry, 2019).

3 The shortest-serving TD to be elected to Dáil Éireann is Kieran Doherty, who was elected in 1981 while on hunger strike in the Maze Prison and died 52 days later. As Doherty’s imprisonment meant that he could not take his seat, Byrne is the shortest-serving TD to ever take their seat, and the second-shortest-serving overall.