Exit poll: Ireland’s top 3 parties in dead heat in election
A recent survey indicates that Ireland may face challenges in forming a new coalition government.
Candidates from Mary Lou McDonald’s Sinn Féin party were slightly the most favored, receiving 21.1 percent of the votes. | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
November 29, 2024, at 11:30 PM Central European Time.
DUBLIN — According to comprehensive exit polls released as the polls closed, the leading three political parties in Ireland have ended up nearly tied in Friday’s election.
The findings from a survey of 5,018 voters exiting polling places across the country — carried out collaboratively by Trinity College Dublin, the polling firm Ipsos B&A, the Irish Times, and the broadcasters RTÉ — indicate that no single party has emerged as a definitive winner. Consequently, Ireland might encounter several weeks of challenging discussions to create a coalition government that can secure a stable majority in the parliament.
The counting of votes in Ireland's election is set to begin at 9 a.m. on Saturday. The initial results are expected to be revealed later that afternoon.
Since Ireland employs a complicated proportional representation system for electing representatives in constituencies with three to five seats, many areas will require numerous counting rounds. It is anticipated that the final results for all 174 seats in the Dáil Éireann parliament won't be finalized until Sunday evening.
The exit poll, which has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points and is more precise than typical political surveys in Ireland, revealed that candidates from Mary Lou McDonald’s principal opposition party, Sinn Féin, were slightly the most favored, garnering 21.1 percent of the first-choice votes.
Prime Minister Simon Harris's Fine Gael party secured the second position with 21 percent of the votes, while the Fianna Fáil party, led by Foreign Minister Micheál Martin, placed third with 19.5 percent.
Generally, an Irish government must include parties that together command at least around 50 percent of the votes in order to form a stable majority.
If the exit poll numbers are confirmed in this weekend’s official results, no pairing of the two leading parties will have enough representatives to reach that objective.
Specifically, the most probable basis for a new alliance—reviving the partnership between the centrist powerhouses Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil—would not reach the necessary majority to govern on their own. They would require assistance from either a third or even a fourth party, or possibly unpredictable independent legislators.
The recently departed coalition government, made up of three parties led by Harris, brought Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil into leadership with assistance from the smaller Green Party, which added a more progressive influence to their administration.
The exit poll indicates that the Greens faced significant setbacks in the voting on Friday, garnering just 4 percent of the votes for first choice.
In this situation, if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael want to keep their positions of authority, they will have to convince larger, new allies to team up with them. Both parties have dismissed the idea of collaborating with the nationalist Sinn Féin, which puts McDonald in a tough spot with limited, if any, viable coalition choices.
