Will clicks and likes translate to young people voting in large numbers for Sinn Féin?

Last Christmas, as political business began to wind down just days before a lengthy winter break, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald took to her feet in the Dáil chamber and kicked off what sounded like another regular debate on the housing crisis.

For those in the room, it seemed like standard fare. This is fertile ground for Sinn Féin, a party that has put the housing crisis front and centre of its efforts to woo voters.

Across the chamber, Minister for Finance Michael McGrath rose to respond to McDonald’s claim that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are “wedded to policies that put cuckoo funds and wealthy investors above young people’s need to get a decent start”.

“Your policies would actually further drive landlords out of the Irish market,” McGrath replied.

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On their TikTok page, Sinn Féin uploaded his comment in a short clip, and then McDonald’s lengthier response.

Over the sound of Adam Ulanicki’s viral song Airplanes, Mary Lou McDonald said: “Your policies are driving an entire generation of our young people from here to Perth, Sydney, Toronto and beyond. That’s what you’re at. I’ll tell you what our policies will do: our approach will move heaven and earth to keep those young people at home or, if they have gone away, to give them an opportunity to come back. You come in here week after week telling fairy tales, imagining that your approach is working when it is plainly failing.”

The clip took off online and was viewed more than four million times on TikTok, a platform that has more than two million predominantly young Irish users.

In the same vein, Sinn Féin this summer put up a four-part TikTok package detailing the back and forth between party TD Imelda Munster and RTÉ executives Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly about misstated payments to the presenter. Nearly four million people watched as an exasperated Munster rolled out lines such as “Ah, would ya stop” or “Sure, you knew he wasn’t being paid in jelly tots”.

An analysis shows that on TikTok alone, Sinn Féin has amassed more than 60 million views for snippets of their Dáil contributions, clips from their doorstep interviews on the Leinster House plinth and even for personal messages. On Instagram, their reels have garnered about 19 million views.

Just last month, Mary Lou McDonald started a video with the caption: “I’m back.” She tells the party’s legion of young online followers that after a surgery earlier in the summer she is “fully recovered, back at work and more determined than ever to lead the change that you so desperately want to see”, before moving on to eviscerate the Government. “We have the team, the energy, the policies and the passion to bring about the real change,” she says. “At the centre of that change is housing. The housing crisis has touched every corner of our lives in devastating ways, none more so than the generation of young people completely locked out of having a home they can afford.”

The party is wasting no time in targeting younger voters through social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, but do the clicks, likes and comments translate to actual votes?

An Irish Times Ipsos poll published earlier this month shows that Sinn Féin is miles ahead of is political rivals with younger people. Some 44 per cent of 18-24-year-olds said they would give Sinn Féin their first preference – up from 35 per cent in summer 2021. Furthermore, 43 per cent of those aged 24-35 said they would vote for Sinn Féin first, up from 40 per cent two years ago.

When Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach in 2017 at the age of 38, he became the youngest person to hold the office. Fine Gael and international media described him as a dynamic, youthful, centrist leader. Hailed as being the vanguard of a rising generation of younger statesmen like Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Varadkar led a refreshed Fine Gael team that it was believed could appeal to a younger voter. While he is one of the handful of Irish politicians who have first name recognition (others being the likes of Mary Lou McDonald) and this has its benefits in a social media world where attention spans can be short, his prominent position also ensures that comments he makes about younger voters do not go unnoticed. Last year, he warned large numbers of younger people considering emigrating from Ireland amid a housing crisis that “the grass looks greener” but they “are not going to find rents are lower in New York”.

He was responding to an opinion poll which suggested that two-thirds of 18-24-year-olds and more than one-third of 25-34-year-olds were mulling a move overseas. The comments drew a not insignificant backlash from younger voters, many of whom seemed to prefer Sinn Féin’s message which was: we will move heaven and earth to get you home.

Dr Kelly Fincham, head of journalism and communication at the University of Galway, says the question is not whether reaching younger voters through social media directly translates into votes but rather about the name recognition that stems from it.

“Much of the conversation about social media defaults to a conversation about how activity there does or does not translate into votes but the research shows that the real benefit of social media activity is the attendant pick-up in traditional media. For candidates without party backing or budgets, social media can be game-changing in drawing mainstream attention.

“So when we’re looking at spaces like TikTok we should be thinking about how candidates can use these spaces to create content in a way that is relatively inexpensive and can also draw greater coverage to themselves or their campaign. So, from a candidate’s point of view, this is a win-win.”

A lack of policy creativity in Government has caused young people to not necessarily say ‘I believe Sinn Fein can do it’ but rather ‘it can do no harm to have someone shake things up a bit’

—  Johnny Fallon

The consolidation of Sinn Féin’s gains among younger voters in the Irish Times polling series has come at the expense, mainly, of Fine Gael. In June 2021, 28 per cent of people aged 18-24 said they would give Fine Gael their first preference. That has now dropped significantly to only 11 per cent.

That figure is of concern to the party – Fine Gael has been in Government since 2011 and has haemorrhaged these supporters.

Johnny Fallon, a political commentator and strategy director, says that while younger voters are flocking to Sinn Féin on the back of their pledges to solve the housing crisis, they do not believe the issue will be solved overnight. He says they are also rebelling against a “lecture-y” tendency of the other parties who tell them to educate themselves on the Troubles and the history of the IRA.

“Young people can’t buy a house and they don’t see a change. They don’t like these comparisons to their parents’ generations. It doesn’t matter what it was like in the past or what it will be like 20 years from now, the question is: what is it like now?”

“A lack of policy creativity in Government has caused young people to not necessarily say ‘I believe Sinn Féin can do it,’ but rather ‘it can do no harm to have someone shake things up a bit’. The feeling is: ‘Let them in. Let’s see what happens.’”

The idea that younger Irish people feel blocked from meaningfully starting an independent life has been backed up by data from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical body, which found that 68 per cent of people aged between 25-29 in Ireland still live at home. This is nearly 26 per cent higher than the EU average.

[ Young Irish ‘failing to launch adult lives’: 68% of people in late 20s still living with parents ]

According to census figures, there are nearly 296,000 people in Ireland aged 25-29. It’s hardly empirical data, but using the Eurostat information, that would mean as many as 200,000 people of this age in Ireland are still living with their parents.

Parties such as Sinn Féin are not blind to this picture: about 700,000 people aged 18-29 are eligible to vote, tens of thousands of whom are stuck in their parents’ home unable to fully start an independent life – and these are social and digital natives who are online and very open to a message of change.

While pretty much all of the political parties in Ireland are using social media to access hard-to-reach voting groups, Fallon agrees that the crux of winning the youth vote has not changed over the past number of decades, and that you can change the way you communicate with different age groups but the most important thing is still the message.

“Really, the channels can change but the core of communication in politics does not, and that is: what are you actually going to do for me? What are you going to change?”

The Social Democrats are not coming up with enough people around Holly and saying: this is a serious ministerial candidate

—  Johnny Fallon

With Sinn Féin’s appeal to younger voters filtering in through the prism of the housing crisis, Fine Gael knows it will have to take a different tack ahead of the next general election. Its pitch in the coming year will be likely to focus on the economy: their argument will be that graduates now have a better chance of getting employed and will pay less tax year on year.

It has used previous budgets, and did so again in Budget 2024, to further cut taxes, childcare costs and third-level student fees, to make free contraception available to more women and to cut public transport fees, even though the latter is part of a Green Party climate push to change the way we travel. The Greens also pushed strongly for a pre-registration system for 16- and 17-year-olds, believing that engaging people with politics at a younger age could increase interest, and participation, in the political sphere once they turn 18.

Last month, Opposition parties laid out alternative budgets stacked high with promises about how they would reward voters if they were in power. Plenty of the baubles were rolled in the direction of younger voters, giving an idea of what their strategies are.

The Social Democrats promised to equalise jobseeker rates for those under 25 at a cost of €63 million. The party also promised a culture and media card worth €200 to encourage 18-24-year-olds to engage with cultural activities such as local theatre, arts and books, a policy with an overall cost of €5 million. It also promised to extend the young adult travel card to 24-year-olds.

The party enjoyed a bounce after the election of Holly Cairns as leader, but that appears to have fallen away somewhat in the last Irish Times Ipsos poll, where support dropped to only 2 per cent. However, it is likely to be transfer-friendly in the next election.

Where the party struggles, says Johnny Fallon, is in convincing younger people that it has the team of ministers-in-waiting. “They are not coming up with enough people around Holly and saying: this is a serious ministerial candidate.” This is something the party is looking to address by promoting TDs such as Gary Gannon and Cian O’Callaghan online, while O’Callaghan has now been made deputy leader.

For Labour, the picture is fairly bleak. It currently commands zero per cent of the 18-24 vote. Despite having TDs with a wealth of experience, the party has not managed to tap into any kind of meaningful youth vote. Ahead of the next election it will probably continue to target the student vote by calling for deeper cuts in student contribution fees, and will also target young parents by calling for universal childcare. In its alternative budget, it promised young people it would restore the full adult jobseeker’s rates for young people, provide the €500 cost of education grant to all back-to-education allowance recipients and invest in youth work services.

24 per cent of 18-24-year-olds would give their first preference vote to an Independent or other candidate. These are younger voters who have not yet found a home or eschew the larger parties

Fianna Fáil has a different kind of youth problem.

It is losing some of its Republican vote to Sinn Féin – ask anyone who attended an Ógra Fianna Fáil conference in the past and they would tell you that is where the rebel songs were once being belted out – and they are viewed by some voters as being part of the status quo at a time when change is very much the order of the day. The most important issue, again, will be the perception that not enough progress has been made on housing – especially when Fianna Fáil holds the housing portfolio.

The party will trumpet the introduction of the renters’ credit, now increased from €500 to €750, and talk of setting up a new national office for mental health.

Another fascinating aspect of the recent polling shows that 24 per cent of 18-24-year-olds would give their first preference vote to an Independent or other candidate. These are younger voters who have not yet found a home or eschew the larger parties.

“Events like the financial collapse completely overwhelm a political system. Ireland remains in a state of flux, which is still working through the system,” says Fallon. “It is a big thing to commit to a political party. There are a large number of voters looking for a home. They are not sure about Fine Gael, about the Greens, about Sinn Féin, so voting Independent is a safe place: [the thinking is] they are local, I know them, I can trust the individual if nothing else.”

Younger voters have a big choice to make, and one that future generations will study closely.

“It is probably going to be another two elections, at least, before Ireland is in a place where you begin to see a pattern evolving of what the next 30 years or 40 years of politics is going to be like. Because until people feel that everyone has had their shot in Government, when everyone is as good or as bad as each other, then we will be in a place where no one party is blamed for everything. Then people will settle and ask: who represents me?”