The Results Analysed: The Aftershocks Continue
If 2011 provided an earthquake election, it is clear that the aftershocks were prolonged and almost as damaging. This chapter analyses vote shifts and seat gains and losses, assesses the performances of the parties, draws inferences from the pattern of vo
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The Results Analysed: The Aftershocks Continue Michael Gallagher The 2011 election could reasonably be termed Ireland’s ‘earthquake election’ because of the profound upheaval it delivered to the party system. The 2016 election in some ways marked a move back towards pre-2011 normality with the two traditional main parties reclaiming their places at the head of the pack, but in other ways it represented a further shift towards something different. If not exactly another earthquake, then the 2016 election was certainly a case of the aftershocks continuing. In this chapter, we analyse vote shifts and seat gains and losses, assess the performances of the parties, draw inferences from the pattern of vote transfers and assess the utility of the betting market as a results predictor. Finally, we analyse the composition of the new Dáil.
VOTES, SEATS AND CANDIDATES A move back towards familiar ground was represented by the significant growth in support for Fianna Fáil, which was not far away from reclaiming its traditional pole position, and the drop in support for Fine Gael, whose 2016 level of support was much closer to its post-1982 norm than
M. Gallagher ( ) Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland © The Author(s) 2016 M. Gallagher, M. Marsh (eds.), How Ireland Voted 2016, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40889-7_6
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the 2011 peak was. The precipitate fall in Labour support could also be seen in this light, its 2016 support level being much closer to its historic average than its 2011 level was. Part of the very high level of volatility displayed at the election (see Chapter 12, especially Table 12.1) was due simply to the tide that had flowed in at the 2011 election ebbing in 2016. However, in other ways, the 2016 result definitely did not mark any kind of return to pre-2011 normality. This is most evident in the historically low levels of support for the traditional parties and the concomitant high levels of fragmentation. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael together, which have averaged around 72 per cent of the votes over the period since 1923 and won over 84 per cent of the votes as recently as 1982, now, for the first time ever, received the support of fewer than half of all voters. These two parties plus Labour, the three constant features of the party system, also dropped to a new nadir, just 56 per cent, compared with a longterm average of 84 per cent and a percentage in the 90s at all elections in the period 1965–82. The largest party, on this occasion Fine Gael, won just 26 per cent of the votes; only once previously had the largest party received fewer than 36 per cent of the votes, that being in June 1927, when Fine Gael’s forerunner Cumann na nGaedheal achieved a plurality of votes with just 27 per cent. This greater scatter of votes and seats among parties is captured by the concept of fragmentation, and specifically by the measure of ‘the effective number of parties’ devised by Laakso and Taagepera.1 By this measure, the effective number of parties at electoral level (based on the distribution of vot
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