On the second day of counting of the Irish general elections, Sunday 1is December, it is the outgoing coalition of the two centrist parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael – both coming in first with just over 20% of the first choices expressed – which has the best chance of forming a new government in the Republic of Ireland.
Sinn Fein, the island's pro-reunification party, almost equalized their performance (with 19% of voters' first choices) but it would have had to take the lead in the vote and manage to convince two to three small left-wing groups ( Labor, the social democrats or People Before Profit) to succeed in building a majority in the Dail (the Irish Parliament) and access power for the first time in its history.
This scenario seemed almost likely until 2023, when Sinn Fein was still at more than 30% in the polls, driven by the desire for change among the Irish, tired of the alternation for almost a century between governments led by Fine Gael or Fianna Fail. Young people paid little attention to the controversial past of Sinn Fein, the former political branch of the Irish Republican Army (IRA, considered a terrorist group by the United Kingdom) and appreciated its proposals to put an end to the housing crisis, one of the sharpest in Europe.
This state of grace did not last: despite her talents as an orator, the president of the party, Mary Lou McDonald, multiplied the missteps, quicker for example to denounce the police authorities than the troublemakers, in November 2023 during the anti-migrant riots in Dublin.
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Economic performance and budget surplus
The party has also alienated part of its popular electorate, having no coherent discourse in the face of concerns linked to the migratory surge. Ireland has welcomed more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees since 2022, and nearly 30,000 asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East, a record for a country of 5.2 million inhabitants. If Fianna Fail and Fine Gael renew the coalition formed at the end of the 2020 elections (to block the path of Sinn Fein for the first time), it is Micheal Martin, the leader of Fianna Fail, who came out on top. a short lead, which should be named tage (prime minister). Aged 64, he has chaired the party since 2011 and has already led the government between 2020 and 2022. He will replace Simon Harris, 38, the leader of Fine Gael.
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