In the coming days there’ll be increased coverage of the Dáil election both from broadcasters and print media alike. But it won’t be entirely confined to the 26 counties, where reporting and analysis of Friday’s poll is expected to be close to saturation.
North of the border, interest in the make-up of the 34th Dáil Éireann is arguably at its greatest level than at any time in the past 100 years and this will likely be reflected in the regional media.
There are a number of reasons for this increased engagement with southern politics – the growing post-Brexit debate around constitutional change, the rise of social media, and a greater general awareness about the Republic’s polity.
Then there’s the rise, fall, and potential rise again, of Sinn Féin.
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The southern Shinners’ fortunes are of interest to northern supporters and detractors alike.
Those in the north whose votes for Sinn Féin have helped the party become the region’s largest want to see similar success in the Republic. They argue, with a degree of justification, that Sinn Féin in government in the south will accelerate moves towards a united Ireland.
Unionists and others less inclined towards Sinn Féin’s brand of Irish republicanism look south in the hope that the wheels are coming off the party’s electoral juggernaut.
This broad cohort have had some cause for hope in the past year or so as support for southern Sinn Féin has slumped spectacularly, with beleaguered leader Mary Lou McDonald no longer a shoo-in as taoiseach.
The Sinn Féin president, once regarded as the party’s strongest asset, has seen her approval ratings nose-dive over the past 12 months, though in closing days of the campaign, the party’s supporters have pointed to a lift in the polls, coinciding with significant fall-off in support for Taoiseach Simon Harris’s Fine Gael.
Elections will always be of interest to a small number of political nerds who obsess over quotas and the destination of surplus votes but this election seems to have caught the popular imagination north of the border.
The high number of independents, many of them with strong localised connections, may prove less interesting individually but the fate of Sinn Féin and the government parties has become more than just political entertainment – it actually has bearing on people’s lives, especially when we consider the recent work of the Shared Island Unit and the various pledges to campaign for unity.
But what is perhaps most interesting about this election and the politics of the Republic generally is the dynamism. In the north, our voting patterns are largely predictable, with only a handful of Westminster seats difficult to call.
As Sinn Féin’s fortunes since the last Dáil election of 2020 have shown, nothing in the south can be taken for granted. The Republic is affluent but it also has pockets of poverty and deprivation. It has an urban elite but also powerful rural interests.
International factors influencing the cost of living crisis and immigration numbers can destablise a government and trigger a surge in support for its opponents.
Yet the same factors can trip up an opposition that can’t reconcile its traditional ideology with voters’ evolving desires, a situation that helps explain the rise of the independents along with some publicity-seeking opportunists.
What we northerners see when we look south is a modern pluralist society with a dynamic political system to match. A place where your ethnic identity or constitutional outlook doesn’t automatically prescribe how you vote.
The Republic’s politics is like any competition – it’s all the more interesting when you can’t guess the outcome.
