Author: dtoher

In a discussion with my parents and brother [three countries, two continents – the wonders of modern communications] over the weekend, we discussed how active Irish voters can be about expressing who they don’t want to be elected. My “home” constituency in Ireland was Dublin South West, which recently had a by-election. This is traditionally a left wing seat, but the transfer patterns were very interesting.

Ireland has a somewhat complicated voting system – Proportional Representation by Single Transferable Vote with multi-seat constituencies. However, in a by-election with only a single seat up for election, this becomes equivalent to the Alternative Vote system that was rejected by the UK electorate in 2011. The first count:

Under the First Past the Post system, Cathal King would have been elected with just over 30% of the votes cast [note that this was on a turnout of just under 35%]. Under the Irish system, the fun and games are just starting. O’Keeffe is immediately eliminated as he has the fewest votes. Tony Rochford is also eliminated as the sum of his votes and O’Keeffe’s votes [so if all of O’Keeffe’s second preferences transferred to him] is still less than Duffy’s first count total. However if 92+74 = 166 votes were added to Duffy’s total this would exceed Coules’ total, so Duffy cannot be eliminated on the first round. This proceeds for the next few rounds with the candidate with the fewest votes being eliminated each time.

The Irish political landscape is complex, with some artificial boundaries in place due to historic ties to civil war era politics. Fianna Fáil was traditionally seen as left of centre economically, but right of centre socially; whereas Fine Gael was traditionally seen as right of centre economically, but left of centre socially (in terms of being not as linked to the Catholic Church as Fianna Fáil were). Labour is left of centre both economically and socially; Sinn Féin is on the hard left; as are the Anti-Austerity Alliance and many of the independent candidates. At present, there Fine Gael would be seen as the most right-wing of political parties active in Irish politics, but in most other countries they would be considered a centrist party.

Why is the centre so cluttered in Irish politics? The transfer market… to win seats in Ireland you need to be able to convince people who would not give you their first preference to at least give you a preference vote further down their list.  This discourages extreme views as they are not transfer friendly.

In this case, McMahon (Independent) marketed himself as a pro-business candidate, so was considered moderately right-of-centre.

Things then begin to get interesting in the context of Irish politics.

Traditionally, it would have been quite rare for Fianna Fáil votes to transfer to Fine Gael. Of Lahart’s 2,200 votes, 1,751 expressed further preferences. If we examine the pattern of transfers:

John Lahart’s (Fianna Fáil) transfers went in the following manner: Anti-Austerity Alliance 357; Sinn Féin 248; Independent 585; Fine Gael 308 and Labour 253. So the majority of Lahart’s votes went right-of-centre; followed by the party that nationally is perhaps in least direct competition for votes with Fianna Fáil.  National opinion polls indicate that currently Sinn Féin is second to Fine Gael in popularity. However, there is still a post-troubles stigma attached to the Sinn Féin vote, so they aren’t viewed by many as “just another party”. Therefore, despite some policies being very similar, voters are actively shying away from transferring to Sinn Féin.

In the next round, Kearns (Labour) was eliminated. Almost all of her votes were transferred to Keane (Fine Gael). As these two parties are in coalition government, this transfer pattern is not that surprising, although perhaps surprisingly this means that Labour voters were going towards the right rather than the left wing.

Between them Cáit Keane (Fine Gael) and Ronan McMahon (Independent – but right-of-centre) had a total of 7,273 possible votes to transfer however only 2,821 votes were actually transferred. This reflected that the remaining candidates were substantially to the left of the eliminated candidates, so those un-transferred votes expressed a preference of “none of the remaining candidates”. However, these 2,821 votes split in the ratio of 65% to Murphy of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, 35% to Cathal King of Sinn Féin.

Despite receiving more first preference ballots than any other candidate, King lost out in every other count to Murphy – a pattern indicating that anyone else was preferred, even if their political views could be considered even more incompatible.

So, how does this reflect back to the Tories and AV? If AV was in-situ in the UK, the Tories would not be so concerned about the UKIP vote. UKIP candidates would likely need to get over 40% of the first preference votes to be elected. However, in many more constituencies, the Conservatives would be far more “transfer friendly” than UKIP – with people choosing the option of “anyone but…”

Unless the Irish electorate are far more sophisticated than others, the ability to vote against a candidate by expressing preferences for everyone else would have had some very interesting consequences in the political dynamics at the next UK general election. Instead we are left with the boring first past the post system.