The 2019 European Parliament elections in Ireland

Johnston, Samuel A. T.

doi:10.1080/07907184.2019.1652165

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…), it was unforeseen that the party would also poll significantly behind first-time populist right-wing candidate Peter Casey and somewhat behind 2011's second-placed finisher Seán Gallagher. Similar disappointment awaited in May 2019: while the party came third in the local elections, it lost 78 seats and 4.4% of its vote compared to General Election 2016 (Quinlivan, 2020), and it lost two of its three European Parliament seats, including the one held by former Presidential candidate Ní Riada (Johnston, 2020).…”

Section: Mid-term Election Results and Opinion Pollingmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…The party led every national opinion poll conducted between 21 July 2017 and 28 March 2019, rarely dropping below 30% (Louwerse & Müller, 2020). It performed well in the local and European elections of that year: in the former, coming a close second to Fianna Fáil on first preference votes (26.9% to 25.3%) while gaining 20 seats (Quinlivan, 2020); in the latter, topping the poll with nearly double the vote of Fianna Fáil (29.6% to 16.5%) and improving by 4.1% on its General Election 2016 showing (Johnston, 2020). Fianna Fáil itself picked up an extra 12 seats to remain the largest party in Irish local government, with a total of 279 (Quinlivan, 2020).…”

Section: Mid-term Election Results and Opinion Pollingmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Fianna Fáil itself picked up an extra 12 seats to remain the largest party in Irish local government, with a total of 279 (Quinlivan, 2020). It performed somewhat poorly in the European Parliament elections, winning only 16.6% of the first-preference vote (almost 8 percentage points fewer than its General Election 2016 score), though it retained its seat in Ireland South and won the 'Brexit' seat in Dublin (Johnston, 2020). 2 The smaller parties had dramatically different experiences in these midterm elections.…”

Section: Mid-term Election Results and Opinion Pollingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The razor-thin working majority of the minority government was extremely sensitive to any change in Dáil arithmetic, even individual changes in affiliation (such as Stephen Donnelly, an Independent since leaving the Social Democrats in September 2016, joining Fianna Fáil in February 2017 Peter Fitzpatrick resigning from Fine Gael in October 2018). Having had Frances Fitzgerald elected to the European Parliament in May 2019 (Johnston, 2020), Fine Gael lost her seat to Mark Ward of Sinn Féin in the subsequent by-election on 30 November 2019 (Whitten, in press).…”

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confidence: 99%

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

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2020

Irish Political Studies

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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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Section: Mid-term Election Results and Opinion Pollingmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Mid-term Election Results and Opinion Pollingmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Mid-term Election Results and Opinion Pollingmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

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2020

Irish Political Studies

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“…Given the centrality of the EU to political debate in Ireland, it might have been that the parties’ stances on Europe were influential in determining voters’ behaviour. Johnston (2020) reports that in fact they were not, and that candidate features were more prominent in self‐reported reasons for vote choice.…”

Section: Election Reportmentioning

confidence: 99%