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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 BackgroundThe 2016 entry in the venerable How Ireland Voted series described that year's general election as 'the election that nobody won' (Gallagher & Marsh, 2016). The heavy losses sustained by the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour coalitionparticularly the decimation of the latter partymade it impossible for them to cobble together any means of prolonging some version of the administration. At the same time, there was no obvious challenger party elected from the opposition benches: while Fianna Fáil outperformed expectations somewhat in the election, it failed to overtake Fine Gael as the largest party (Barrett,

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