An exit poll in Ireland suggests a dead heat between Sinn Féin and the taoiseach’s party Fine Gael in the general election, with Fianna Fáil only slightly behind.
The survey of first preference votes is the first real indication of how Ireland voted after three weeks of canvassing in the snap election called by Simon Harris.
The poll put Sinn Féin, which went into the election as the third most popular party, in first place with 21.1% share of the vote followed by Harris’s party at 21%, slightly edging Fianna Fáil, the leader in the race in the latest polls this week, at 19.5%.
Fianna Fáil’s outgoing finance minister said it was clear “a lot of seats were going down to the wire” and the data was in the “margin of error”.
Data on second preferences showed Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, led by Micheál Martin, doing better with 20% share of the vote each. Sinn Féin scored 17% on second preferences, according to the exit poll. The margin of error from the poll is 1.4%.
Damien English, for Fine Gael, told the Irish broadcaster RTÉ it suggested “a very positive result” for the party and could translate to “37 or 38 seats, which will mean 20 news TDs [Teachtaí Dála, members of the Irish parliament].”
The leftist party, led by Mary Lou McDonald will be heartened by the suggestion it has slightly shaded the country’s two main political bodies given it went into the campaign battered by scandals and decline in popularity in its core base over its migration policy.
Sinn Féin’s director of elections, Matt Carthy, hailed his party’s performance.
He said it marked a significant turnaround from the party’s disappointing showing in June’s local and European elections.
“When you consider where we would have been coming out of the local and European elections, I have to say it’s a phenomenal result,” Carthy told RTÉ.
He added: “We do recall that in 2020 the exit poll actually undershot Sinn Féin to the tune of 2%-plus. So if that was to transpire tomorrow morning, there is every chance that Sinn Féin will emerge from these elections as the largest political party.”
Carthy would not be drawn on what the exit poll might mean for coalition formation. “This is a hugely positive exit poll but the real votes will be counted tomorrow, so let’s see where they land,” he said.
Harris appears to have fared slightly better than polls this week, which projected a six-point drop in vote share from 25% at the outset of the three week campaign to 19%.
The survey of about 5,000 voters who had cast their ballot during the day was carried out by Ipsos MRBI for RTÉ, The Irish Times, TG4 and Trinity College Dublin. It comes with two strong health warnings – it reflects first preference votes only and with a margin of error.
Gary Murphy, professor of politics at Dublin City University, told RTÉ that Fine Gael would be relieved with the exit poll given the “quite dramatic and precipitous” decline in popularity according to polls this week.
The fourth largest group is predicted to be independents at 12.7% of the share, far below the projections of close to 20% in some earlier polls.
Irish results are based on a proportional representation system, which makes the outcome more difficult to predict and the result longer to emerge. Voters rank candidates, with second preferences going to those choices as long as they are still in the race and have not already been elected or eliminated.
Counting in Friday’s ballot will not begin until 9am on Saturday, with close-to-final results expected by the end of Sunday. Tallies by the parties, which operate a parallel informal counting operation in all 43 constituencies, are expected to reveal their projections of the election results at around lunchtime on Saturday.
Unless there is an outright majority for one party, which is highly improbable, it could be weeks before a government is formed as parties negotiate and horse-trade over the makeup of a new coalition government.
The Dáil consists of 174 seats with around 88 needed for a clear majority. However, a coalition is more probable than a majority government.
Meanwhile the leader of the Social Democrat party announced the birth of a baby daughter on the day of the election. Holly Cairns, who is standing for re-election in the Cork South-West constituency, posted on Instagram: “She’s here. We are completely in love with her.”
