Ben Lowry: Sinn Fein electoral surge in Republic has been long time coming

Amid this turbulence, opinion polls have struggled to predict accurately what in the end happens in an election.

It might be, therefore, that polls in the Republic are over-stating Sinn Fein’s support when they show it to be the most popular party there ahead of Saturday’s general election, or if not first then almost as popular as the traditionally far bigger two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

Even if so, the republican party is likely now to have its best ever election result in the Republic of Ireland.

It has averaged 21% in surveys of voting intentions over the last month.

Many commentators have pointed out that polls often exaggerate support for Sinn Fein, and that is what happened in 2016.

The party averaged around 17% in polls prior to that Irish general election, and on the day got about 3% less than that, winning 13.8% of the vote.

In the 2011 general election in the Republic, the research on voting intentions in the month before polling stations opened also over-stated Sinn Fein support, albeit more modestly, by about 1.5% — the party got 9.9% on the day.

In the previous election, in 2007, polling had suggested Sinn Fein would increase its representation in the Dail but it failed to do so and won only 6.9% of the vote.

But this time Sinn Fein is polling so strongly that if polls are over-stating its support as much as they did in 2016, the party will still get 18% of the vote.

If so, that will be the party’s best ever result. As the table on this page shows, below, it has only once in an election in the Republic got more than 18% of the overall vote: in 2014, when it collected 19.5% of the first preferences in the elections to the European Parliament.

However, MEP elections in Britain and Ireland often attract a large protest vote and can produce atypical results, whereas a Dail election is of much greater significance because it decides who forms the government. Ministerial positions in any Irish administration are overwhelmingly held by TDs.

The Sinn Fein breakthrough south of the border has been a long time coming. As the panel below shows, the party was rejected by an overwhelming majority of Irish voters prior to the 1994 IRA ceasefire.

From the early 1980s, when it began contesting elections (as part of the ‘ballot box and armalite’ strategy) the party always got between 1.2% and 4.9% of the vote.

It was not until after the 1998 Belfast Agreement that Sinn Fein began to make strides in the Republic, and even then it was a gradual process.

It took until 2004 before it ever got 10% of the vote, and only twice — in the 2014 MEP and council elections — has it broken the 15% barrier.

Detailed breakdowns of voting according to age show that older voters, those who remember the IRA campaign, are still far, far less likely to back Sinn Fein than younger voters.

It might yet be that the controversy over Conor Murphy’s comments about the murdered young South Armagh man Paul Quinn remind southern voters of Sinn Fein’s past paramilitary associations, so damaging their vote this weekend.

Unionists will be wondering if the sudden return to power sharing at Stormont has bolstered Sinn Fein, who were polling badly for much of last year, until recent weeks.

Their sudden revival, however, might just be a reflection of voter volatility that has seen parties rise, fall and rise again in the UK as well as Ireland.

If Sinn Fein do hold the balance of power next week, then the outgoing Fine Gael government might wonder if it should have criticised republicans for collapsing Stormont in 2017, then keeping down power-sharing until it got a list of demands (almost all of which have now been granted).

Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney never did that. The latter in fact recently identified the DUP as the obstacle to the return of devolution, never having embarrassed Sinn Fein in that way.

• Previous SF vote share in Republic elections listed from highest to lowest

2014 May 23 MEP 19.5%

2014 May 23 Council 15.2%

2016 February Dail 13.8%

2011 October Presidential 13.7%

2019 MEP 11.7%

2009 June 5 MEP 11.2%

2004 June 11 MEP 11.1%

2011 February Dail 9.9%

2004 June 11 Council 8.1%

2009 June 5 Council 7.4%

2007 May Dail 6.9%

2002 May Dail 6.5%

2018 October Presidential 6.4%

1999 June 10 MEP 6.3%

1984 June MEP 4.9%

1994 June 9 Council 3.96%

1999 June 10 Council 3.5%

1985 June Council 3.3%

1994 June 10 (?) MEP 3.0%

1997 June Dail 2.5%

1989 June 15 MEP 2.2%

1991 June Council 2.1%

1987 Feb Dail 1.9%

1992 November Dail 1.6%

1989 June 15 Dail 1.2%