The last time I voted under the Single Transferable Vote system (STV) it was the mid-1980s and I was voting for Leeds University student union officers. It’s simple enough; you place a number 1 in the box next to the candidate you would most like to see elected, 2 against your second favourite, and so on, until you get to candidates you really can’t stand the sight of, and you leave those boxes blank.
There’s a complex calculation such that if your first preference candidate gets eliminated your vote transfers to your second preference candidate, and so on until all the positions are filled, i.e. it’s simple for the voter but complicated for the people in charge of the count.
STV is also the system of Proportional Representation in use at the Irish general election that happens on Friday, and I’m paying careful attention because as a British citizen I do have a vote. I’ve got my polling card.
It’s normal here to bring a form of ID with you – I know it caused ructions in the UK, but here it’s not seen as a sinister imposition. The polling station, in the local school, is quite like a British one but the atmosphere is somehow more convivial. There are more people milling about and chatting, and more officials handing out the ballot papers. It’s a far cry from the empty and echoing squash court where I used to cast my ballot in Barnard Castle. You are given an extremely long ballot paper which must cost a fortune to print, because as well as the names and party affiliations of each candidate, there’s a little thumbnail colour photo of them next to their name. Then you make your numbered choices.
And then you wait. After the local and European elections, it took about a week to work out who had been elected, because of the laborious re-allocation of votes after each round of counting, so there’s no point waiting up all night to see who has been kicked out or voted in.
Each constituency here has several Teachta Dála or TDs. Our constituency of Fingal covered a huge swathe of outer County Dublin and had five TDs, but this time it’s been split down into Fingal East and Fingal West, which will be returning three TDs each.
Some British critics of PR don’t like the idea that the link is broken between one elected representative and one constituency, but the beauty of the Irish system is that whatever your political persuasion, there will probably be a TD who is sympathetic to your views who will be willing to help you with whatever problem you might have. I can’t say the same for British MPs.
The state of the parties
So, who are the ‘runners and riders? The two biggest parties since Ireland became independent are Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It’s hard for me to keep them straight in my head. Most commentators place them both in the centre or centre right. Their policies are pretty much interchangeable, and indeed they have been in coalition, along with the Green Party, since 2020. Historians will realise that both these venerable parties were born from the original Sinn Féin.
One party consisted of idealists who wanted nothing short of a united Ireland of 32 counties, the other was made up of pragmatists who decided to settle for the treaty offered by the British which led to the partition into Ireland and Northern Ireland. If you want more detail on this, read a good history book, or watch the movie ‘Michael Collins’. A hundred years on and there’s very little difference between them.
These parties are polling at about 21% each as we go into the election. The third party at a similar level of popularity is the party still known as Sinn Féin. It’s been through a number of iterations since the Civil War and is currently sitting on the far left of the political spectrum. In the European Parliament it is beyond the Socialists and Democrats, being a member of The Left grouping along with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise and the Greek Syriza. It’s basically a populist party, known for promising the Moon on a Stick to younger voters, particularly in terms of solving the current acute housing crisis.
Many people remember that it has never apologised for its past association with the terrorism of the IRA. Others mutter darkly that it is being run from Belfast. It is certainly active on both sides of the border. Of course it advocates a united Ireland, but that isn’t a distinguishing feature in the Republic, where all political parties hope to welcome in Northern Ireland at some future date.
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