Dáil to look different in all ways but one

Seat-by-seat analysis shows dramatic change is on cards but gender divide set to stay

NOMINATIONS ARE now closed and the campaign is at the halfway point.

Most of the party manifestos have been launched and published. We are one leaders’ debate down – albeit without Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny. We have also had a full set of election-time opinion polls.

This therefore presents as a useful moment in which to make a serious attempt at guessing what the make-up of the next Dáil might be.

It can of course only be a guess and it is subject to variance if the polls fluctuate, but it may help readers to appreciate the scale of the change in Dáil representation likely to be delivered by this election. The most useful analysis published to date is the poll of polls data prepared for RTÉ by Trinity College’s professor of comparative political behaviour, Michael Marsh.

Marsh has been preparing combined poll data on the basis of all polls by Red C, Milward Brown Lansdowne and Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI which have been published in the last two weeks.

Recently updated, these polls collectively have a sample of 6,000 and the poll of polls gives national figures for the parties as follows: Fianna Fáil at 16.3 per cent, Fine Gael at 33.3 per cent, Labour Party at 22.7 per cent, Sinn Féin at 12.1 per cent, Green Party at 1.8 per cent and Independents at 13.8 per cent.

Even more significantly, Marsh was able to break these figures down by region. The most interesting figures he has mined are those for Dublin, where Fine Gael is now on 30.3 per cent and ahead of the Labour Party which is on 29.9 per cent.

Fianna Fáil is still on a disastrous 11 per cent in the capital even after its change of leader. Sinn Féin is on 10.6 per cent in Dublin, the Green Party is at 2.8 per cent while Independents are at 15.1 per cent.

I have spent some time this week taking Marsh’s poll analysis one step further by applying these figures and the local polling and political intelligence available in each constituency in an effort to speculate on the likely outcomes of this election seat by seat.

In doing so, I have also had regard to the finalised candidate line-up in each constituency, the boundary changes since 2007 and the 2009 local elections results grafted on to Dáil constituencies to the extent that this is possible.

My call at this midway point in the campaign is as follows.

Fine Gael is doing well overall and could win 70 seats. Labour looks like falling a little short of earlier expectations to win 35 seats, while Fianna Fáil looks like it will do a little better than the nightmare scenarios I and others have previously floated for them and could win 31 seats.

Sinn Féin has slipped slightly from its previous highs but could still win 12 seats and Independents and smaller parties could win 18 seats combined.

It is worth pausing for a moment to remark on how extraordinary such an outcome would be overall.

Fianna Fáil would lose considerably more than half the seats it won in 2007 while Fine Gael would gain another 20 or so seats on top of the 20 seats it gained in 2007. The Labour Party would still almost double its seats, Sinn Féin would more than double theirs and a whole raft of new Independents would emerge.

The transformation in representation in my scenario also has interesting geographic dimensions.

In my breakdown Fianna Fáil would, for example, win at most four seats in the capital and there would be 10 constituencies in all where Fianna Fáil would win no seat.

There would be three constituencies where there would be two Independents elected and one constituency where Sinn Féin would win two seats. There would be 11 constituencies where Labour would still have no seat and the Green Party would have no seat at all.

Even apart from the transformation in the size of the parliamentary parties to which such an outcome would give rise, the “predicted” Dáil I came up with had a number of other striking features.

The membership would be newer than any new Dáil since 1918. There will be perhaps 60 or even 70 deputies in the next Dáil who were not in the outgoing chamber. Of these, up to five or more will be former deputies who were not elected to the 30th Dáil and will be returning to parliamentary duty. About eight of them would be current senators switching to the Lower House. At least one-third of the members of the next Dáil will be entirely new to the Oireachtas.

On the basis of this exercise, there will be at least one new deputy in each of the 43 constituencies bar one. The exception is Donegal South West, where at this stage I am predicting there will be no change in personnel – although there was of course a change of personnel in this constituency only four months ago when Pearse Doherty was elected. Some are also cautioning locally that a high-profile casualty cannot be ruled out through a change of personnel on the Fianna Fáil side.

Such will be the turnover of seats that I think there will be at least three five-seaters and even two four-seaters where at least three seats will change hands between the parties.

One might have hoped that this level of turnover would generate a real opportunity for improved female representation in Dáil Éireann.

However, of the 166 members of my probable Dáil, only 16 would be female. The next Dáil will be a radically different one in every respect except gender.