Irish elections: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael lead as count continues – BBC News

Sinn Fein TD Padraig MacLochlainn emphasised that the party has “gained seats all around the state but not at the level we would have hoped for”.

“The last local elections in 2019 pretty disastrous for Sinn Fein,” he said.

“This election was always about catch up. We didn’t regain the amount of ground we would have liked.”

In Ireland, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

The current government party Fine Gael are now the largest party in local government, taking over from their partners in government Fianna Fáil.

As counting continues, the big story from Ireland is the success of independent candidates.

Non-party representatives from all stripes have swept the boards, in both rural and urban areas. In Europe, a similar story has emerged.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, both centrist parties, are likely to be the first announced MEPs to return to Brussels.

Sinn Féin, who were at one point tipped to shake up the Irish political scene, have failed in their bid to take over local councils but may return to Europe with one MEP.

The party, who were once uncatchable in political polling, have plummeted as the party has struggled to confirm their stance on immigration and housing for asylum seekers.

Their leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said “lessons will be learned” from this experience.

This is her second disappointing local and European election since taking over from Gerry Adams in 2018.

Voters headed to the polls for the three elections on Friday.

The polls will provide political parties with an insight into voter sentiment ahead of the next general election, which must be held by March 2025.

Polling stations across the EU shut at 22:00 on Sunday night, allowing count centres to start declaring results for the European elections.

A total of 14 MEPs will be elected across the three constituencies of Ireland South, Midlands-North-West and Dublin.

However, no candidates were last night elected in the European constituencies of Dublin, Midlands-North-West or Ireland South.

The Republic of Ireland uses a voting system known as proportional representation (PR) in all its elections.

Local councillors, TDs (Members of the Irish parliament); Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and even the president of Ireland are all elected via PR.

Under the PR system, every voter has a single transferable vote (STV).

That means in each constituency, people can vote for as many or as few candidates as they want on the ballot paper, indicating their choices in numerical order.

The PR-STV system means that if a voter’s preferred candidate is eliminated because they got too few first preference votes, those ballot papers can be redistributed to the remaining candidates, based on voters’ second preferences, and so on.

Additionally, if a candidate receives more votes than they need to reach the election quota, their surplus votes can be redistributed, according to the voters’ preferences.

The benefits of the PR election system in contrast to a simple “first past the post” election is that PR tends to offer smaller parties and independents a better chance of winning seats against larger, more established parties.

It also gives voters more of a say over who represents them as they can indicate alternative preferences if their first choice candidate has little hope of winning.

But critics of the PR system argue it can result in weak coalitions coming to power, rather than a government with a strong majority which could rule decisively.

They also argue that PR permits parties to stay in power by forming new coalitions, even when their popularity has declined.