Irish Election 2016 Results

Even though Ireland is no longer part of the United Kingdom, I will write up the results of their latest election.

Ireland has had two main political parties since the 1920s which have developed into Fianna Fail (FF) and Fine Gael (FG). FF split from the Anti-Treaty (Anglo-Irish Treaty) Sinn Fein in 1926 and FG can trace its roots back to Pro-Treaty Sinn Fein. Just to confuse things further, there is a modern version of Sinn Fein (SF). There is also the Labour Party (LAB). FF has been in government much more often than FG.

The Irish general election of 2011 resulted in a FG-LAB coalition after FF lost 24 percentage points and dropped from first place to third place. As of this morning, here are the current seat totals in the Irish parliament:

FG: 50
FF: 44
SF: 23
LAB: 7
OTH: 34

with 79 seats needed for a majority.

FG is way down on last time. FF has moved up to second place and SF up to third. LAB have moved down to fourth, losing 80% of their seats in the process. Clearly the FG-LAB coalition is short of the winning post by quite a wide margin.

In fact there are no two party coalitions possible, except FG-FF. I suppose the British equivalent of that would be a Conservative-Labour coalition which I'm sure would never happen, although it is certainly possible as the grand coalition in Germany shows.