Winning the Irish Election, Three Seaters were the Key

A very interesting fact jumped out from some notes I was making as I re-read the results from the weekend (yes, I am that sad). The victory for Fianna Fail lay in a number of vital areas. Primary among those was the manner in which they secure seats in three seat constituencies.

I had a number of thoughts about this election which were gestating since election night. Primary among them was that Fine Gael and Labour didn’t seem to do too badly in big seats. Of the 166 seats on offer, there were 60 on offer in five-seat constituencies (12 constituencies in total; Carlow-Kilkenny, Cavan-Monaghan, Cork South Central, Dublin South, Dublin South Central, Dun Laoghaire, Galway West, Laois-Offaly, Limerick East, Mayo, Wexford, Wicklow). When one takes the two competing coalitions as Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats versus Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens (to take them at their first preference for coalition), the results of the competition for those 60 seats is that Fianna Fail/PD win 27 while Fine Gael/Labour/Green win 30.

This is unlikely to surprise observers of the system, since larger seat constituencies tend to have a far lower threshold for getting elected as a proportion of votes cast. This allows smaller parties to take seats where in a three or four seater their vote share would prove to be not enough. It tends to suggest also that there was a strength to some of the logic of the Mullingar parties where they outnumbered Fianna Fail in larger constituencies.

The four seaters were a far more neutral hunting ground for both parties. In all 52 seats were offered in thirteen four-seat constituencies (Clare, Cork East, Cork North Central, Dublin Central, Dublin Mid-West, Dublin North, Dublin South East, Dublin South West, Galway East, Kildare North, Longford-Westmeath, Louth and Waterford). The results of these battles was that Fianna Fail/PDs had 25 seats and Fine Gael/Labour/Green also had 25.

It is when we move to the final category of constituencies, three-seaters, that we see exactly where the dominance of Fianna Fail comes to the fore. There were 54 seats on offer in eighteen three-seats constituencies (Cork North West, Cork South West, Donegal North East, Donegal South West, Dublin North Central, Dublin North East, Dublin North West, Dublin West, Kerry North, Kerry South, Kildare South, Limerick West, Meath East, Meath West, Roscommon/South Leitrim, Sligo/North Leitrim, Tipperary North, Tipperary South). Here is where Fianna Fail hammers home its adavantage in vote share.

Fianna Fail/PDs won 28/54 while Fine Gael/Labour/PDs won 22/54. The amazing thing about the three-seaters is that in those ones where PJ’s rule applies (i.e. the transfers do not alter the first preference outcome) Fianna Fail take two seats in almost all cases. In the five cases where the transfers actually alter the first preference outcome, four ended up yielding two Fine Gael seats.

It is clear from above that we can conclude a number of things, from a Fine Gael/Labour point of view, the pact tends to perform well in higher seat constituencies where both parties can be sufficiently competitive to take seats (this is, I admit, not simply a function of seat-size, there are issues such as candidates, policy and the national picture, to consider). From a Fianna Fail point of view, they are most vlunerable when their three seater constituencies begin to turn on them.

The winning of this election for Fianna Fail was a soild ticket across three seaters, I am tempted to suggest that to win the election it seems Fine Gael and Labour would need to run joint tickets to manage a vote akin to what Fianna Fail do in 3 seaters effectively it would merge the parties since the competitiveness is eroded by running 5 alternatives to 2/3 Fianna Fail candidates its not just that but its a big factor. The importance of tightening up the strategy is that the transfers suddenly come into play and give one of the two a better chance of winning, since Fine Gael and Labour do better in those constituencies where the transfers count.

That, of course, never happened. Nor could it, one suspects. The value for Fianna Fail is the large volume of votes they get. Yet for Fine Gael and Labour a more coherent three-seater ticket (which, I appreciate, was never on the cards) could have maximised the gains that were eked out in 4/5 seaters.

My point is not that this should happen, but that to beat Fianna Fail requires something akin to an amalgamation between the alternative options. Why? Because ensuring Fianna Fail take a single seat in the three seaters is the key to winning an election. Where Fine Gael and Labour get in they benefit from big votes, good transfers and a tighter ticket. This is not being presented as a global rule but as a reflection on some of the trends which seemed to emerge from the figures. It is also being presented to underline how difficult it is for the leaders of the opposition parties to begin to tackle Fianna Fail’s dominance in this country.

Of course Fianna Fail won’t see it that way, they will be happy to sit atop the tree. And well they might, though their strength is at once their achilles heel. The big seaters very nearly swung to Fianna Fail, that is the signal of overall majority. It is when small seaters swing to the opposition that the party looks likely to lose its grip on power. Perhaps there were logical limits to how closely the opposition could work in ousting the status quo in the 3 seaters, yet it appears to be what is required to steal seats from Fianna Fail and not from each other.