Since 2011 time has stood still for Fianna Fáil

The crucial question facing Fianna Fáil delegates this weekend at their final ardfheis before a general election is whether the party’s electoral prospects have improved since 2011.

In 2011 Fianna Fáil polled just over 387,000 votes, down 471,000 on its 2007 performance. Effectively this was the party’s bottom line core vote because if you were to turn away from the party there would be no better reason to do it than after the economic crash.

There was much discussion about whether the party could even survive, but a logical analysis suggests that 387,000 votes on the darkest day was far from a wipeout. Indeed, the actual return of just 20 seats was eight less than strict proportionality would have achieved.

However, since 2011 time has stood still for the party: in the six byelections during this Dáil the core vote has remained virtually unchanged in two and fallen in the other four.

The level of stagnation is illustrated by Meath East, where in 2011 Fianna Fáil got 8,384 votes, then in the March 2013 byelection polled 8,002 and in the local elections had a total of 8,223.

The latter two results were hailed as a success because they represented 33 per cent and 27 per cent respectively of the total votes cast. However, this was not due to an increase in Fianna Fáil support but rather a significant drop in turnout.

In the byelection there were 18,000 fewer votes cast and as the combined Fine Gael and Labour vote fell by 16,000 it is reasonable to assume that those 2011 supporters stayed at home.

In the local elections the turnout was down 12,000, while Fine Gael and Labour had fallen by a combined 18,000. The difference this time was that the non-party vote had increased 6,000.

The 2014 local election results seemed to indicate that Fianna Fáil was in recovery mode as its 25 per cent share of the vote enabled it to win 267 seats, an increase of 49 over 2009; it also became the largest party. Its vote increased by 42,600 compared with 2011, although that figure was still 47,300 below its 2009 result.

However, the 25 per cent owes more to a drop of over half a million in turnout compared with 2011 rather than a significant increase in the Fianna Fáil vote.

Core vote

The constituency of Longford-Westmeath epitomises the true extent of the difficulty that Fianna Fáil still faces when trying to entice those outside its core vote to view it as a viable option for elections to the Dáil. This constituency alone accounted for 41 per cent of the increase in support for Fianna Fáil in the rest of Leinster.

In the local election Fianna Fáil got some 16,600 first preference votes in the geographical area of the Dáil constituency of Longford-Westmeath (part of the Mullingar-Coole LEA is in the Meath West constituency). On that very same day in the byelection caused by the death of Nicky McFadden, Fianna Fáil got 8,910 votes. There are those who have tried to explain away the difference of 7,700 votes as being a consequence of Aengus O’Rourke coming from Westmeath and therefore there was no Longford Fianna Fáil candidate to support.

There might be some validity in that theory if the turnout for the byelection was very different from that in the locals, but there was a difference of just over 1,000, which would be largely accounted for by people from neither Ireland or Britain who can vote in local elections but not in those for the Dáil.

Effectively the same people voted in both elections and the stark reality for Fianna Fáil is that over 7,000 voters gave a number one vote to them in the local election but preferred a non-Fianna Fáil candidate when it came to sending someone to Leinster House.

There was also a suggestion that the Independent from Longford, James Morgan, might have been the recipient of the lost Fianna Fáil first-preference votes but that can also be discounted as on his elimination, with over 6,600 votes, just 1,048 transferred to O’Rourke.

What is likely is that a considerable portion of the soft Fianna Fáil vote went to Sinn Féin, as Paul Hogan had added almost 3,000 votes to the SF local result when the byelection votes were tallied.

Favourite

The pattern of a good local election performance not being replicated when it comes to votes for the Dáil was demonstrated again in the Roscommon-Leitrim South byelection last October.

This constituency accounted for a quarter of the increase in support for the party in Connacht-Ulster in the local elections, doubling its 2011 vote to 14,300. But just five months later, in a contest in which the bookies made Fianna Fáil favourite to take the seat, its vote reverted to within 200 of its 2011 tally.

A pattern has emerged of voters giving some increased support to Fianna Fáil when a Dáil seat is not at stake but it is still rooted at its 2011 levels when a place in the national parliament is available.

The biggest concern for the party remains its standing in Dublin. It was the only region where its support actually fell in 2014 compared with 2011.

Ironically a similar vote to 2011 could produce as many as a dozen additional seats. The redrawing of boundaries, which reduces the number of three-seat constituencies from 17 to 13, is of benefit, as is the reconfiguration of the existing 11 five-seaters, although this must be accompanied by a judicious candidate strategy.

There is also unlikely to be the large combined vote of 1.23 million for Fine Gael and Labour, so the vote will be much more splintered than it was in 2011.

Odran Flynn is a political analyst and commentator