Abstract
For the third election in a row, the Irish electorate delivered a result that marked a profound break from anything that had gone before. This chapter analyses vote shifts and seat gains and losses, assesses the performances of the parties, draws inferences from the pattern of vote transfers and assesses the utility of the betting market as a results predictor. It also analyses the composition of the new Dáil. The continued decline in the combined strength of the two traditionally dominant parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and the subsequent formation of a coalition government between them, seem to mark not a temporary interruption to but rather the end of the 1932–2008 party system.
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Notes
- 1.
Michael Gallagher, ‘The results analysed: the aftershocks continue’, pp. 125–57 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2016: the election that nobody won (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 126–7.
- 2.
David M. Farrell and Jane Suiter, ‘The election in context’, pp. 277–92 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2016: the election that nobody won (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 279–81.
- 3.
For the historical pattern, see Peter Mair, ‘The election in context’, pp. 283–97 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2011: the full story of Ireland’s earthquake election (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 286. As noted in Chap. 10 (see p. 250n8), the true level of vote-switching was significantly higher than this.
- 4.
Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, ‘“Effective” number of parties: a measure with application to west Europe’, Comparative Political Studies 12:1 (1979), pp. 3–27. The intuitive meaning of a figure such as 6.16 is that the party system is as fragmented as if there are 6.16 equal-sized parties. The calculation is based on treating each independent candidate as a separate unit, except when Independents ran under a common label such as ‘Independents 4 Change’.
- 5.
The lineage of today’s Sinn Féin party, and in particular the degree of continuity between it and the party of the same name that existed early in the last century, is open to debate. John Coakley suggests that today’s Sinn Féin party is most accurately seen as having been founded in 1970; see his ‘Introduction: constitutional innovation and political change in twentieth-century Ireland’, pp. 1–29 in John Coakley (ed.), Changing Shades of Orange and Green: Redefining the Union and the Nation in Contemporary Ireland (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002), pp. 16–17.
- 6.
The configuration of constituencies changed somewhat from the 2016 election on foot of the 2017 report of the Constituency Commission. The overall number of seats in the Dáil rose from 158 to 160. Eighteen constituencies were completely unchanged, while in some other cases there were minor boundary adjustments. There were only four major changes, in each cases involving significant boundary adjustments: (i) Cavan–Monaghan changed from a four-seat to a five-seat constituency; (ii) Dublin Central changed from a three-seat to a four-seat constituency; (iii) Kildare South changed from a three-seat to a four-seat constituency; (iv) the two three-seat constituencies of Laois and Offaly (re)joined together as one five-seat constituency. Because the Ceann Comhairle, who is deemed automatically re-elected, was returned from Dun Laoghaire in 2016, the number of contested seats there rose from three to four, and since in 2020 the outgoing Ceann Comhairle was a TD from Kildare South, the number of contested seats there remained at three despite the additional seat it received in the pre-election redistricting.
- 7.
This refers to the number of Hare quotas each party’s national vote total amounts to; the Hare quota is calculated by dividing the total number of votes (2,183,489) by the number of contested seats (159). Sinn Féin’s votes came to 39.0 Hare quotas, Fianna Fáil’s to 35.3 and Fine Gael’s to 33.2, with Labour at 7.0, Social Democrats 4.6, Solidarity–PBP 4.2, Aontú 3.0, independents 19.6 and all other groups less than 1.
- 8.
Gallagher, ‘The results analysed: the aftershocks continue’, pp. 137–8.
- 9.
Neither the Green Party nor Labour nor the Social Democrats nominated more than one candidate in any constituency, so the question of internal solidarity did not arise.
- 10.
Gallagher, ‘The results analysed: the aftershocks continue’, pp. 146–7.
- 11.
Michael Gallagher, ‘The election as horse race: betting and the election’, pp. 148–66 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2007: the full story of Ireland’s general election (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
- 12.
All odds from www.paddypower.com. The seat figure quoted here is the break-even point, which Fine Gael was seen to have as much chance of exceeding as falling below. Thus, on 14 January, the bookmaker offered the same odds (5–6) that Fine Gael would win more than 49.5 seats as that it would win fewer than 49.5.
- 13.
One exception was Professor Michael Marsh of Trinity College Dublin, whose prediction on 3 February was that Fianna Fáil would win 43 seats, Sinn Féin 42, Fine Gael 34 and the Greens 12; see https://www.rte.ie/news/election-2020/2020/0203/1112736-poll-of-polls/.
- 14.
To be precise, the betting market examined here, that on www.paddypower.com, offered odds for 460 of the 531 candidates. The other 71 were presumably the object of no interest from potential punters, and indeed they all fared poorly; only two of them qualified for reimbursement of expenses, and only six even received more than 1000 first preferences. The odds used for analysis are those on 7 February, the last day before polling day; by election day itself this market was no longer open. Probabilities are based on the raw odds offered, not adjusting for the overround, that is the amount by which the sum of probabilities of the options exceeds 1.
- 15.
The values are those of Pearson’s correlation; a value of 1 indicates a perfect relationship, while a value of zero would indicate no relationship.
- 16.
Gallagher, ‘The results analysed: the aftershocks continue’, p. 150.
- 17.
Fiona Buckley, Yvonne Galligan and Claire McGing, ‘Women and the election: assessing the impact of gender quotas’, pp. 185–205 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2016: the election that nobody won (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
- 18.
For discussion of the reasons for the under-representation of women in parliament, see Yvonne Galligan and Fiona Buckley, ‘Women in politics’, pp. 216–39 in John Coakley and Michael Gallagher, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 6th ed (London: Routledge and PSAI Press, 2018), pp. 228–30.
- 19.
Ken Carty, ‘Another election – but not one to choose a government’, www.politicalreform.ie/2020/01/17/another-election-but-not-one-to-choose-a-government/, accessed 7 February 2020.
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Gallagher, M. (2021). The Results Analysed: The Definitive End of the Traditional Party System?. In: Gallagher, M., Marsh, M., Reidy, T. (eds) How Ireland Voted 2020. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66405-3_8
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