Less can mean more when it comes to election strategy

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

For a political generation Fine Gael had but a single Dáil deputy in Galway West, Pádraic McCormack. On several occasions his running mate was strong but it was, as the Americans say, close but no cigar.

The party played second fiddle to Fianna Fáil in those years which never had less than two TDs in Galway West and on one heady occasion could command three out of five.

Of course, the bulk of the vote that followed Bobby Molloy into the Progressive Democrats could directly trace its roots to Fianna Fáil.

All of that changed in 2011. For three years the fate of Fianna Fáil had read like the plot of a disaster movie and the election in February that year stayed true to the narrative arc.

So who was going to benefit? Fine Gael obviously.

But its election strategy was a tad strange. For one, McCormack failed to get through convention which was unusual for a sitting TD. He accepted the decision.

Eventually the party decided on a rather unusual course of action, to run four candidates.

The party’s most senior representative in the constituency at that stage was Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames but she found herself in the unhappy position of being one of three Fine Gael candidates in the eastern quadrant of the constituency, along with Brian Walsh and Hildegarde Naughton. Geographically, Sean Kyne was in a much stronger position, based in the north west of the area. But even on a rising tide that strategy seemed a little strange.

The party did not have enough first preferences collectively to come near winning a third seat but would arguably have made the task of winning two much easier by running three rather than four. Healy-Eames in particular had cause to feel aggrieved – in the end Walsh and Kyne prevailed.

Still the party achieved its aim of winning two seats. If it had ran ten candidates and still won two it would still have been a success.

Since 1997 the accepted wisdom in our form of elections, proportional representation by single transferable vote, is that the party maximises its chances by minimising the number of candidates.

This technique was first used by Fianna Fáil in the 1997 elections that saw Bertie Ahern being elected as Taoiseach for the first time. The Fianna Fáil vote in 1997 was more or less the same as its vote in 1992, when Albert Reynolds fell far short of a majority and went into coalition with Labour.

However, the outcome on almost the same percentage of support five years later was incredible – bringing Fianna Fáil close to an overall majority. It achieved this by ending the practice of running multiple candidates and running only probables and possibles.

There were a few no-hopers of course but they remained if the party needed a presence in a corner of a large constituency or if a strong local organisation had asserted its will over party headquarters.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.