My (Irish) election predictions

With the three ring circus of the US election wrapped up it’s now time for us to turn our attention to the rather less icky but far more pedestrian Irish general election. I don’t know why but I follow politics in the same way as some people would follow sport. It’s a one day public spectacle with a sense of anticipation or anxiety where there are winners and losers. It can be predicted to some extent but you never quite know what’s going to happen on the day. For predictions from an actual smart person click here instead.

So here’s how I see the state of play for 2024. There are two likely scenarios at wildly different ends of the spectrum.

Scenario 1

The incumbent government parties (Fianna Fail and Fine Gael) make modest gains on their respective 2020 seat counts and happily skip back into Leinster House with Labour or the Social Democrats in tow to shore up the numbers. The Greens don’t factor as they come out of this cycle battered and bruised barely hanging on to a handful of seats.

Scenario 2

Independents eat into the coalitions seat count just enough to put them out of reach of a majority. Sinn Fein ride a wave of anti-establishment sentiment from undecided voters that goes completely under the medias radar and secure a better-than-hoped-for result. Some time in the new year they announce they’ve formed a coalition with the Social Democrats and Labour. People Before Profit participate in negotiations but the centre-left finds it hard to jive with their more radical policies. Nonetheless the coalition goes on to steal some of PBPs ideas in their policy programme.

It’ll be interesting to see how wrong I was when the dust settles in December.