Talking Turkey: Winning Seats in 2007

In the course of study, a couple of amazing things stand out about Irish politics. Foremost among these is the incredible continuity shown by the Fianna Fail party in winning seats and maintaining power. Other parties have tried, with mixed success, to usurp the “party of government” and very rarely have Fianna Fail been consistently away from the big table.

There are two distinct elements to this success story. The first is an unshakable commitment to power. The party exists to be in government and its parliamentary party expect nothing less than being at the helm of the country. This tendency has led initially to prolonged one-party government (exceptional in a PR system) and then to the pragmatic acceptence of coalition in order to retain power.

The second element, one the other parties can have more influence in, is the nature of the Fianna Fail vote. Formed as it was in the early 1920s, the vote was a big tent of ideologies, all of which were commited to a sovereign Irish Republic. That big-tent has, to this day, been the major success of Fianna Fail. They attract votes from across the social spectrum, A1-F.

Fianna Fail’s support traditionally has been in the 40%-50% region with events above and below. It seems incredibly prolific that voter support for them across the bands from A1-F has consistently been in the 35%-50% region (data in the article is mostly taken from tables in “Politics In The Republic of Ireland“). It is plausible to induce from those figures that the FF vote is consistently cross-cutting of social class, ideology and position to represent a sample of the electorate as a whole.

The complexion of the Fianna Fail vote is thus “big-tent”; an amalgamation of theoretically opposed interests in one party. The traditional model of campaiging by the main opposition parties has been to replicate this and attract a similar vote from across classes. This leads to a consensus based approach to policy which fudges, ignores or sidelines issues of too much divisiveness. It has been in the three main parties’ interests to keep certain issues off the agenda at certain times so as to facilitate the prosecution of a campaign on cross-sectional lines.

The model of Fianna Fail voter is a cross-class tradtional one. The parties strength is a function of tradition and genealogy. The inheritance of family votes in all areas of society is a key factor in their winning of seats. Their votes tend to permeate from one generation to the next as the research of Michael Laver has tended to show. The older voters are habitually acclimatised to voting for Fianna Fail; the tendency has been for offspring to adopt that pattern in their own behaviour.

Recent work however suggests that voter behaviour may be fragmenting, or at least liable to fragmentation under the right circumstances. This thesis sees the current generation of 20-45 year olds as forming key roles in the deciding of election outcomes as they move through the demographics and become the “traditional” generation. And yet the opinion polls variously from Red C, MRBI and Landsdowne put Fianna Fail in the relatively healthy position of 32%-40%. Not at their peak but in a dominant position nonetheless.

What does all this mean for the winning of seats?

Quick recap: the culture of Fianna Fail is to attract their vote from a cross section of society and rely on that ongoing support to win seats in the Dail and thus get into government. The general tendency—at least that I discern—among Fine Gael and Labour is to try to mirror that pattern and pitch for a cross-sectional vote similar to Fianna Fail. This means prosecuting a policy on similar lines to Fianna Fail and trying to wedge chunks from across the A1-F bracket in equal measure.

The possible event of increasing fragmentation, outlined above, suggests to me that this may be a flawed strategy. I take as evidence of this the support that Fine Gael seems to be receiving on the back of “potential government” status conferred by the unconditional backing of Labour. The strategies I see before us could be divided into “old” and “new”.

Old: The old strategem was the attempt to shoehorn vast swathes of votes from Fianna Fail. The logic used to pursue this was “they do it well, so copy them”. The emphasis was on cross-sectional campaigns with a focus on a selection of core voters. The campaigns walked a tightrope balancing as they did the interests of core vote with the desire to become a wider “big-tent” style party. Thus the traditional parties seemed to be seeking to usurp Fianna Fail as the cross sectional vote getter.

How successful was this strategy? Considering the prolonged periods of Fianna Fail goverment, I would suggest that it has been patchy at best.

New: The new strategy, and to my mind the most potentially rewarding, seems to focus on the possibility of fragmentation. It is the one being pursued by three “new” and very diverse parties. The notion is that it accepts the days of big-tent may be over and the best way to begin to adjust to this is to carve away not en-masse but at a section of the Fianna Fail vote.

The PDs, Greens and Sinn Fein have each set out their stall on the premise of specificity. They are by no stretch of the imagination big-tent entities. Their tack has been to highlight to sections of society the inherent paradox between their own personal interest and the policy of their supported party. Almost by definition, this is Fianna Fail’s achilles heel. Its policies need to favour something or someone and, no matter how hard it tries, it seems unlikely ever to please everybody.

The PDs know their niche and, although they harm Fine Gael more than Fianna Fail, pursue their prey with specific policies suited to their interest, couched in rhetoric that will ensure successful integration among the classes they desire support from. Similarly the Greens have prosecuted this policy, but from the point of view of Fianna Fail, most of the current threat is from Independents and Sinn Fein.

Recent polls suggest a cooling in the Sinn Fein vote and a general boosting of the Fianna Fail one. The Sinn Fein machine has set about slicing off a section of Fianna Fail support for its own. It pounds pavements in working class areas, getting its message across that the party of support is not aligned with their interests. “Look behind the rhetoric and you will see a party that doesn’t support you” is the alluring call. Independents operate in a similar vein, emphasising how the parties do not represent certain interests, despite their claims/appeals to.

The test for the new strategy is, of course, next May, at which time I shall be proved foolishly naive or sharply insightful.

Before finishing, I wish to move to the “alternative government”. It is clear that the strategy they are prosecuting now is a model of the “old” writ large. They have made explicit the attempt to shoehorn a cross section of the Fianna Fail vote, they are looking for the same big tent that has served Fianna Fail so well. In making policy pronouncements before the election, agreeing policy and acting as a united front (if not even party), they are staking a claim to be the alternative big-tent. Yet the times of the big tent may be behind us.

Fine Gael is doing better relative to Labour in the poll successes that the alliance has brought. This suggests that those who are being convinced of the other tent are using Fine Gael as a pole around which to congregate.

Those parties taking a different tack, namely emphasising particualarity and specialness, are those who may well be king makers after the next election. And I am drawn to wonder, how successful would these parties be at what they do (considering the potential rise in their vote in percentage terms) if the two opposition parties drew a different tactic. One of emphasising particular interests and of showing up the big-tent as paradoxical and counter productive.

This harks back to a point I made a long time ago about the manner of Labour campaigning. It’s clear to all that my allegiences lie on the left so it is natural they would be the source of my critique, yet they seem not to have taken on board the hard lessons. The goalposts are moving and the party who responds to this the best (and it may well be Fianna Fail) are likely to reap the rewards.

The above analysis leaves out other obviously crucial factors, yet I feel that a meta-campagin view suggests a change of tack may be more beneficial to the ‘alternative’ if they are to make the progression to government.