DUBLIN — The top three political parties in Ireland have finished in a virtual three-way tie in Friday’s election, according to detailed exit polling published at the moment polls closed.
The results from the survey of 5,018 voters leaving polling stations nationwide — conducted jointly by Trinity College Dublin, pollsters Ipsos B&A, the Irish Times newspaper and broadcasters RTÉ — suggest that no party has won a clear victory. As a result, Ireland could face weeks of difficult negotiations to forge a multi-party government capable of commanding a stable parliamentary majority.
Ballots in Ireland’s election will start to be counted at 9 a.m. Saturday. The first winners will be announced Saturday afternoon.
However, because Ireland uses a complex proportional representation system to elect lawmakers in constituencies with three to five seats each, more than a dozen rounds of counting will be required in many districts. Determining the winners of all 174 seats in the Dáil Éireann parliament isn’t expected to be complete until Sunday night.
The exit poll — which has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points, far more accurate than normal political opinion surveys in Ireland — found that candidates from Mary Lou McDonald’s main opposition Sinn Féin party was marginally the most popular, attracting 21.1 percent of first-preference votes.
Prime Minister Simon Harris’ Fine Gael party finished second with 21 percent, while Foreign Minister Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil party came in third with 19.5 percent.
Typically an Irish government needs to be composed of parties with a combined minimum support of approximately 50 percent to achieve a working majority.
If the exit poll figures are borne out in this weekend’s official results, no combination of two of the top parties would have enough lawmakers to attain that goal.
In particular, the most likely foundation for a new coalition — a resumed combination of center-ground heavyweights Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil — would fall far short of the numbers required to govern without support from a third or even fourth party or, potentially, loose-cannon independent lawmakers.
The outgoing three-party Harris administration put Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil into power with support from the much smaller environmentalist Green Party, which gave their government a leftward tilt.
The exit poll suggests that the Greens suffered heavy losses in Friday’s vote, attracting only 4 percent of first-preference votes.
In this circumstance, to remain in power, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would need to persuade bigger new partners to join them. Both have ruled out working with the nationalist Sinn Féin, leaving McDonald stuck with few, if any, effective coalition options of her own.
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