Election wobbles aplenty but no dramatic falls on the cards for political year ahead

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

How eventful a political year will 2014 be? Well there’s no general election but a local election. The troika has gone and the stabilisers have been taken off the bike. So we certainly expect to see a few wobbles but no dramatic falls.

So on the face of it, it could be a slightly more prosaic mid-term year. But as we have seen so often in politics, the dramatic and momentous often happen when they are least expected.

The biggest events on the political calendar will undoubtedly be the local and European elections which will take place in June. They will be keenly watched as political weather vanes. But the truth is while they will a little about the state of the parties, they will not tell you a lot.

There has been a trend in Ireland and elsewhere for governing parties to be given – to use Enda Kenny’s technical phrase – a wallop in mid-term elections, only to recover fully and consolidate in general elections.

The textbook example is Britain under Tony Blair, where Labour did very poorly in local elections yet romped home in three successive general elections. We saw the same pattern here in Ireland under Bertie Ahern, though not quite as marked.

The problem with analysing this summer’s elections is with what do you compare it? If you compare it with the 2007 general election it showed a number of interesting trends. But then what happened in the general election in 2011 was so dramatic, so extraordinary that all comparisons seem redundant.

Fianna Fáil was the dominant party in 2007 with Fine Gael recovering somewhat from the 2002 debacle, and Labour treading water. Sinn Féin – which had been mooted as the up and coming party for a decade – actually suffered a reverse, losing one of its five seats.

The local elections of 2009 signalled a change in the political winds. The recession was beginning to bite and it was clear that steely grip of Fianna Fáil was being prised away.

It lost 84 seats on city and county councils, seeing its support levels fall back to a record low of 25.4 per cent. With 218 seats it was a distant second to Fine Gael which upped its percentage to 32 per cent and won 340 seats.

Labour was also on an upward trajectory under new leader Eamon Gilmore, taking 132 seats (a gain of 31) and becoming the largest party on four councils: Dublin City; Fingal, South Dublin; and Galway City. 

The bad news for Sinn Fein was that its reverse in 2007 looked like it had turned into stagnation. The party won 54 seats and 7.4 per cent of the national vote – exactly the same as it had been in the previous local elections of 2004.

The funny thing now is that Fianna Fáil would be very happy indeed to get the lousy 25 per cent it got in 2009, given that it won just 16 per cent of the vote and few transfers in 2011.

It’s likely too that Fine Gael might get close enough to the 32 per cent it got in 2009, though I’d say it’s more likely to score in the high twenties but could still retain most of the gains it made five years ago.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.