Fianna Fail, the party of current Prime Minister Berie Ahern, has retained its plurality of seats in Ireland’s general elections, with 78 out of the total of 166. That is a decline of three seats from 2002. Coalition partner, Progressive Democrats, won 2 seats, down from 8 (and its leader was defeated). Thus the incumbent government was not reelected.
The main potential alternative coalition would be Fine Gael (51, +20 from 2002!), Labour (20, no change), and Green (6, no change). Obviously, even though Fine Gael is the big gainer here, their coalition is likewise short of a majority.
The Irish Times notes that the Greens could offer support for Ahern. Greens leader, Trevor Sargent:
We’re open to talk to everybody. But anyone who wants to talk to us, I’d advise them to read our manifesto and policies first.
There are also five independent members, as well as 4 members from Sinn Fein (-1 from 2002). As if there had been any doubt, Ahern explicitly ruled Sinn Fein out as a partner the day before the election. As for the independents one of them is noted in the Irish Times article as preferring Fine Gael, but willing to work with Ahern. They could be pivotal if Ahern can’t or prefers not to work out a deal with the Greens. Unlike the Greens, the independents are less likely to demand significant programmatic concessions. In any event, the independents’ presence could reduce the Green’s bargaining leverage substantially.
Ireland is, of course, the land of STV. Exact seat totals could vary when all counting is complete, but probably not by much. Then again, this is one of those elections when the ultimate shape of the government may be decided by “not much.”
The vote percentages–based on the party label of voters’ first-preference candidates–were:
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Fianna Fail, 41.6 (almost the same as 2002)
Fine Gael, 27.3 (+5)
Labour, 10.1
Sinn Fein, 6.9
Green, 4.1
PD, 2.7
others, 6.6
Note how the workings of preference transfers appear to have played a role in the Greens having more seats than the extremist Sinn Fein, even though the latter had almost three-percentage points more first-preference votes. The Fine Gael seat increase of 12 percentage points when their votes went up by only five points also suggests success in attracting second (and lower) preferences. STV in action!
STV is proportional to the final allocation of preferences, not first preferences. Speaking about first preferences as votes without any qualification is the conceptual equivalent of analysing an MMP election by looking only at the list results and ignoring the district results.
Seed planted by Alan — 28 May 2007 @ 03:17
Alan, well put! I agree completely. One could also say it is conceptually the same as reporting results of two-round elections with only the first round votes. Yet it is very hard to find aggregated national votes from the second round of French legislative elections–maybe true for Hungary, as well, although I am not sure.
If they have to report just one total, it should be the “decisive” votes, which would indeed be the ultimate allocation of preferences in STV, the list votes in MMP, and whichever votes were decisive for any given district in two-round majority.
Seed planted by MSS — 28 May 2007 @ 16:54
The only question I would have is Why did the Progressive Democrats do so poorly? I guess since they split with Fianna Fail in the late 80′s, they will probaly merge back with them considering the poor result.
I heard in STV in Ireland, politicians get thrown out if they are not attentative to their constitutents. They have to do so much constituency work because they are not the only politician that represents the district.
Is this because politicians are competing against each other for constituency service since STV uses Multi-Member districts much more so than is the case for Single Member Districts?
It is very nice to see that Sinn Fein got it’s big head brought down to size. I think they lost out simply because they didn’t get very many transfers.
So does STV benefit centrist parties more than extreme parties? So who got most of the transfers?
Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 29 May 2007 @ 00:34
Suaprazzodi asks, “does STV benefit centrist parties more than extreme parties?”
Compared to what? Compared to winner-take-all, I don’t think so. Campared to party list systems (including MMP), probably — but that’s because the typical district magnitude is smaller than the district magnitude of many list systems. I don’t think it’s because of being a ranking system, or because of being candidate-centered rather than party centered.
I don’t know whether anybody’s studied this (or even whether there’s enough data), but my guess is that party list and STV systems *with the same district magnitude* provide roughly the same degree of fairness to both centrist and away-from-center parties.
Seed planted by Bob Richard — 30 May 2007 @ 14:48
I know of one study that has addressed the impact of ranked preference voting on the relative success of moderates and extremists, and its conclusions are not what advocates of such systems would like. It is, however, about AV (IRV) and not multi-seat STV.
Fraenkel, Jon and Bernard Grofman. 2006. Does the Alternative Vote Foster Moderation in Ethnically Divided Societies? The Case of Fiji. Comparative Political Studies, 39(5): 623-651.
Seed planted by MSS — 30 May 2007 @ 16:28
The first transfer analysis of the recent election is here.
“The Greens at 9 per cent were the least likely to transfer to Fianna Fáil . . . it is also worth noting the ranking of terminal transfers to Fine Gael. This was, in ascending order: Sinn Féin 21 per cent, Independents 31, Greens 31 . . .”
Yet the Greens are contemplating a coalition with Fianna Fail and the PDs. Exactly like the unnatural “black/yellow/green” briefly proposed for Germany in 2005 — CDU/FDP/Green, also called the “Jamaica” coalition after the colours of the Jamaican flag — which never happened. How will Green voters accept a choice they refused to make?
Seed planted by Wilfred Day — 05 June 2007 @ 23:18
Ireland: The Green Isle
Ireland will be getting Greener, as that nation’s Green Party has agreed for the first time to join a coalition government.
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 13 June 2007 @ 18:39