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GE2024Out of the dog houseBY MOST METRICS, this has been an election the Labour Party will be very pleased with.
At the time of writing, the party has won eight seats and is guaranteed to win two more with an eleventh looking very possible.
The party will see six (or seven) new TDs enter Dáil Éireann this time around, almost doubling its six seats won in 2020.
So what does this say about the Labour Party’s brand – have they officially been detoxified?
This is a question that never fails to split an audience – Labour members and supporters hate it and will vehemently argue that the days of a radioactive Labour Party are long gone.
When asked by The Journal recently if her party has lost its traditional labour base, party leader Ivana Bacik was having none of it.
“I absolutely refute that.
“That line has been trotted out in every election… I remember that line being used against the party in the 1980s,” Bacik responded.
But for significant swaths of the public, the memory of austerity is still raw and the effects of it, and the crash that came before, are still very much felt. Rightly or wrongly, the Labour Party continues to be associated with this.
Baby steps
The results of this election show that the party is continuing to take small steps further out of the country’s bad books but they are still a long, long way from their previous highs.
A large part of why the party has had three decent elections this year (remember the locals and Europeans?) is probably down to two related things: the passage of time and the party’s crop of fresh faces.
The party ran 32 candidates in this election and received 4.7% of first preference votes, very similar to the Social Democrats’ 4.8% and significantly above that of the other smaller parties.
Although its percentage increase in first preference vote share compared to 2020 was just marginally up (with an increase of 0.3%), it still managed to add five (possibly six) TDs.
It’s significant however, that almost ten years on from Labour’s disastrous election of 2016, when the party received a battering from the electorate after its stint in government and returned only seven of its 37 TDs, the party has not managed to massively increase its vote share or number of TDs.
No poll toppers
It’s worth noting that not one Labour TD managed to top the polls in this election. Even in 2016 when the party was decimated, the party’s Brendan Howlin, who went on to become its leader, managed to top the poll in Wexford.
By comparison, other smaller parties did manage to have some poll toppers this time around.
Take the Social Democrats for example, Deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan topped the poll in Dublin Bay North. Or Independent Ireland, where both Michael Fitzmaurice in Roscommon-Galway and Michael Collins in Cork South-West had the highest number of first preference votes in their constituencies.
The most popular of all Labour’s candidates this time around was Rob O’Donoghue in Dublin Fingal West who secured 16.7% of first preference votes – above party leader Ivana Bacik who secured 14.3% in Dublin Bay South and former leader Alan Kelly who secured 15.5% in Tipperary North.
Across the board, O’Donoghue, Bacik and Kelly were the only three of Labour’s 32 candidates to receive the second-highest number of votes in their constituencies.
Others also placed high however, with Louth’s Ged Nash and Fingal East’s Duncan Smith both placing third.
Dublin South-West’s Ciarán Ahern, Kildare South’s Mark Wall and Wexford’s George Lawlor each received the fourth highest amount of first preference votes in their constituencies.
All of this indicates the party’s strong popularity in these areas and shows they were well in contention for the seats early on, without heavily having to rely on transfers.
That said, the party was still notably transfer-friendly this time, more than it was in 2020.
Take Limerick City’s Conor Sheehan who secured the constituency’s fourth seat despite placing 7th in first preference votes.
And the more obvious example is Marie Sherlock, who successfully won the fourth seat in the hotly contested battleground of Dublin Central despite receiving 633 fewer first preference votes than Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch.
With a new generation of Labour TDs entering the arena, the party looks poised to continue to build back its strength, but one thing remains indisputable: the electorate has been very slow to forgive.
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Hard to forget joan Bruton & water charges
@Frank Mc Carthy: I wonder what iPhone Joan is up to these days
@Frank Mc Carthy: And she was correct to do it and I am far from a labour fan.
@Trump24: won’t last
Is it Labours way or FFG way
There is so so much no NEVER forget or forgive when it comes to libour. Joan “IPhone ” Burton, Alan “water charges” kelly, Eamon “Labours way or Frankfurts way” Gilmore. Pat “sure isn’t that what you do during an election” rabbite. Anyone running under the Labour banner are morally bankrupt. As far as I’m concerned their motto should be “Damage done, more to do” they will never get a sniff of a vote again from me as long as I live. I doubt they have learned anything from their time in the wilderness, they will prop up tweedledum and tweedledee first chance they get. Anything for power and they will continue to turn the screw on the poorest in society taking up where the Greens left off. We really are a doomed people.
Hopefully, they’re going to fulfil the promises they have made, not like the last time..
@bridie lyng: I think if they go into Government it’s a risk, but they should seriously consider it if they can hold FFGs hand in the fire, some of stuff was a bit silly too.
They want to overturn the citizenship referendum. So if illegals have a child in Ireland, he will be Irish and they can stay.
@Dan Murphy: lucky they can’t do that, isn’t it?
Their vote is up 0.3% and they’ve doubled their representation. Hats off to a stunning victory. Now the plan is to cosy up to the party that left them in the state they’re in, is it?
@Darth O’Leary: It’s certainly a risk but it’s difficult to achieve anything if not in Government either…..if the SDs and Labour were to enter might be a better idea, idealogy is the same and if they didn’t like what was going on pull the plug.
@Darth O’Leary: That sums them up. They are a mixture of madness and treachery in equal measure.
@John Brennan: And now a political force, suck on that lemon.
Let Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael form an minority government, that way all the rest can pull the rug at anytime.
@Jimmy Kiely:
FFG are a lot of things, but they are not dumb.
@P. J.: I never said they were dumb, what would be dumb is for any of the small parties to go into government with them, just look at what happened to Labour and the greens.
The only people voting for Labour are middle-class gobdaws that can’t stomach voting for SF, They believe in earnest that Labour won’t end up being another FG-lite which is what they are.
@chewy: Yep there’s and element of that thankfully but the SDs are there too, so we have 2 choices not to vote for SF……life’s improving.
All the Democratic Left and Workers Party loons are gone from Labour now. Why they ever merged with them is a mystery. They took over and drove the party off a cliff.
@Ronan Mc: Absolutely it ruined the party and the memory of great labour people like Corish, Jim Kemmy to name 2, Toddy O’Sullivan was a man I really admired from a young age…..got really drunk with Billy Bragg one night in Cork and he wished that the UK labour party was like ours , Kinnock would have been leader then, whilst Billy would have been far left at the start , fame mellowed his view I was 23 and was thinking of emulating Gordon Gekko for a change, he said he felt it’s okay to earn money but it’s what you do with it is important.
They ended up with Tony Blair…
@Paul O’Mahoney:
Billy Bragg is wealthy.
Yeah, it took me a full 12 years to get over the Pat Rabbitte “aren’t you supposed to lie before an election?” comment.
Brendan Howlin clicking his fingers at the Gardai like they were dogs because they wanted them to be his personal bodyguards. Channelling his own mini-Napoleon.
“Gilmore for Taoiseach’ – remember that?
Awful stuff.
I think Ivana Bacik has been a steady leader since she took over – she doesn’t have any of that awful entitlement of her predecessors ..so I voted Labour this time (and SDs).
I’m just baffled more people didn’t see through S.Harris’s giddy soundbite electioneering when it’s pretty obvious he made a baIIs of everything the has touched since he entered politics (Children’s Hospital, Scoliosis promises broken – both of which he tried to blame on others).
@Dave Murray: Howlins mothers house was attacked by a mob over some issue, and she was very elderly and he demanded security……..you probably think she was fair game.
@Paul O’Mahoney: Brendan Howlin has been a Labour TD longer than 12 years were you fine with him before Austerity?
@Dave Murray:
She is the product of private fee paying schooling and has her kids in private fee paying private schools.
Entitled is her middle name.
@H Woo: Who is ?
Well I’m more comfortable voting for them, I was against the merger with Democratic Left as I felt that it would water down the core beliefs of the party.
I drove to Galway in the 2007 election as we had moved back to Kildare, I couldn’t and didn’t vote for Stagg, so I lent my vote to the SDs with preferences to non government parties. Labour has been many things since I began voting, some really good stuff and some really really bad stuff….but now it seems at least to be trying to get to the centre Left of Irish politics again. Voted Labour this time the vote increased here so let’s see what happens next.
Well done Labour. Some excellent representatives in my area, they’ve been visible and have made a difference within our community. They deserve an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past.
People need to move on and judge the current crop of candidates and not the past ones….if we all spent our time focused on that it’d be a pretty bleak existence!!!
Labour are 1 not working class 2 they are too dangerous to have in government and now full of idealistic newcomers no clue of what it is to govern. It may not be water charges but it will be an attack on the weakest remember Joan Burton attacked Carers and single mothers in 2011.
Just going pop up ffg nothing new
Labour were meant to have our backs, instead they backed us into a corner, they’re even worse with Bacik leading them. They’ll prostitute themselves for a whiff of govt.
They will go into government and be back like the greens in 5 years all with nice pensions
@John Reynolds: They havnt been invited yet, and I reckon FF will do Gregory deals with 10 Indo’s, rather than give them Minister jobs. And upset their own teams in doing so.There’s at least 10 bankers that can be tied in with constituency goodies dripped out for 4 years, which will boost FF as well.
@William Kelly: That’s the first port of call and if the SDs and Labour went into Government together, they would eliminate any backwashing if they pulled the plug ….ie …Independents might not like the smell..
Did the Rabbite really give the money back.
If they go in parlement again than the loose them again in 5 year time.
This election was high rollers, farmers, and Capital city begrudging bitter people.
@Phillip Smyth: for.
Our pension remains cut by the “temporary pension levies” which ended for others in 2014, and Lab have not even responded to appeals for remedy. So no support, no family votes in DBN.
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