Rejection of incumbent parties has been a global theme in a year in which more voters than ever have cast ballots. It has been a talking point of Democrats seeking to make sense of their failures in last month’s elections. According to Harvard’s Steven Levitsky, incumbents have suffered losses in 40 of 54 Western democracies since 2020. Over 80 percent of incumbent parties have lost parliamentary seats or vote share this year.

So it was striking when Irish voters opted overwhelmingly for the status quo in last Friday’s general election. Ireland has a complex ranked-choice system with vote transfers, which establishment parties navigated to secure the lion’s share of seats in the Dáil (Parliament).
A unique feature of post-independence Ireland has been “civil war” politics, with power alternating between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the political party manifestations of the two sides in the country’s 1922-23 civil war. Now, over a century after hostilities ceased, the parties are increasingly difficult to distinguish ideologically. These reliable champions of left-wing social policies and neoliberalism each won just over 20 percent of first-preference votes.
Left-nationalist (another quirky concept endemic to the Celtic world) Sinn Féin, once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, earned just under 20 percent. The left-wing Social Democrats and Labour rounded out the top five, followed by upstart socially conservative parties Aontú and Independent Ireland, and finally the decimated Greens.
Conservatives can relish small victories and harbor some optimism in a country that hasn’t featured any truly conservative politics in this millennium.
Aontú and Independent Ireland have secured a combined six seats, up from one in 2020, in the 174-seat Dáil. Both earned enough first-preference votes to receive government funding, the lack of which has handicapped their campaign activities to date. Independent (party-unaffiliated) candidates won 16 seats, and some of these T...