If you asked the average person what the best thing about the Irish electoral system is, they’d probably tell you that it’s “fair”. And on paper, of course, it is: A party that gets 20% of the votes should, in theory, get about 20% of the seats. Votes are represented proportionally.
Where the system falls down though is here: It is functionally impossible for a clear majority of the electorate to throw a single party out of government, even if it is the wish of an overwhelming majority of the voters that said party should not be in Government.
In the current situation, there is no better example of that problem than Fianna Fáil.
If we are to take the most recent opinion polls, the Irish electorate is roughly divided into five blocks of around 20% each, give or take a few opinion polls. Fianna Fáil has 20%. Fine Gael has 20%. Sinn Fein has 20%. The left-wing broad church of Labour, the Greens, the Social Democrats, People before Profit, and assorted left independents like Clare Daly, Thomas Pringle, and Catherine Connolly have about 20%. And centrist to right leaning independents and other parties have about 20%.
The problem is this: To govern, a Government needs 50% of the seats. And there is functionally no path to forming a Government without Fianna Fáil, even if the rest of the electorate don’t want Fianna Fáil in Government.
The practical reason for this is that FF, FG, and SF command 60% of the votes between them. The only viable path to forming a Government is for two of those three parties to work together, as FF and FG have for the past five years. But Fine Gael and Sinn Fein have effectively ruled out any prospect of governing together. Only Fianna Fáil will talk to either of them.
If you listen to Sinn Fein, of course, that party’s ultimate ambition is to lead a Government without either FF or FG. The problem is that the polls and mathematics make that an almost impossible prospect. Sinn Fein’s 20% plus the 20% of the various left-wing blocs doesn’t get a Government anywhere near a majority – and that’s to make the very grand assumption that Sinn Fein could actually negotiate a deal that keeps People before Profit in a Government with the Greens.
Even if they did so, how likely is it that the party could secure support from the likes of Mattie McGrath and Carol Nolan and Michael Lowry for a Government with the hard left?
That option – absent a sudden change in voting preferences before Friday – is off the table. This means that Sinn Fein’s only viable path to power is to partner with Micheál Martin.
The same is true of Fine Gael. That party – even on last week’s polling, before the recent slump – does not have a path to power other than through Micheál Martin. These are the only two options that can anchor a Government – FF/FG or FF/SF.
As such, there’s a basic question of democracy here, that simply isn’t served by our electoral system: Who do you vote for if you want to remove Fianna Fáil from Government.
In a majoritarian electoral system, like the UK’s or that in the United States or even Australia, the system is designed to allow voters to sack their Government easily. If you don’t like the Conservatives, you vote Labour. If you don’t like the Democrats, you vote Republican. Governments can be cleanly and decisively removed. It would be unheard of, in those systems, for a party with 20% support after five years in office to be returned to power.
In Ireland, it is perfectly possible for 20% of the electorate to in effect hold 80% of the electorate hostage, which – you could argue – is the situation in Ireland at present. Since the country has decided that it needs a Government, for some reason, the mathematics produced by our electoral system means that Micheál Martin is the most powerful man in the country despite having the support of only one in five of us.
The irony is, of course, that twice over the last century Fianna Fáil tried to get the public, in referendums, to abolish PRSTV and move towards a single-seat majoritarian form of democracy, identical to that which they have in the UK. Had such a system been in place, Fianna Fáil would likely have been entirely wiped out at the 2011 general election, and Ireland would have two-party politics between Sinn Fein and Fine Gael today.
Instead, the voters kept PRSTV on both occasions that they were asked. And, half a century later, the biggest beneficiaries of that electoral system are the party that tried to abolish it.
Of course, defenders of PRSTV will point out that in theory, the system can still be used to wipe Fianna Fáil out entirely – but the fact remains that to do so, much of their current support would have to desert them entirely, or the electorate would have to unite around a real alternative. Sinn Fein or Fine Gael would need to be getting 40% of the vote to toss out Mr. Martin, and neither are close.
The public are unlikely to change the system any time soon. And few voters have any real interest in discussing or debating electoral systems to begin with. But the fact remains: It is this electoral system, and not the voters, that essentially guarantees us another period of Fianna Fáil Government.
I think – regardless of your feelings on Fianna Fáil – that this is evidence of an electoral system that is deeply unsuitable in a modern democracy.