The vote count in Ireland, after the general elections last Friday, began this Saturday with the three major parties of the country in an apparent technical tie and exploring government pacts waiting to know the final result.

The vote count started at 9:00 a.m. GMT this Saturday, after a voting day in which the majority of the electorate, of almost 3.7 million, divided their first preferences between the leftist Sinn Féin of Mary Lou McDonald, the Christian Democrat Fine Gael of the Prime Minister, Simon Harris, and the centrist Fianna Fáil of Michál Martin.

Results according to a survey at the foot of the ballot box

According to a poll at the ballot box of the public broadcaster RTE and the newspaper ‘The Irish Times’, the three formations obtained 21.1%, 20% and 19.5% of the votes, respectively.

The campaign director of Fianna Fáil, Jack Chambers, said today that it is still early to guess who will win, since it will depend largely on the transfer of votes between candidates, as allowed by the complex Irish electoral system.

The centrist leader insisted, however, that his party does not contemplate a government pact with Sinn Féin, former political arm of the IRA, which indicates that they could reissue the historic coalition of the last legislature with the Fine Gael, in which the Greens also entered, who now obtain 4%.

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CEL

Chambers highlighted that the aforementioned poll indicates that 35% of voters want their leader, Micheál Martin, to be the next ‘taoiseach’ (prime minister), while McDonald gets 34% and Simon 27%, in line with his drop in popularity during the campaign.

For her part, the nationalist leader has assured that she will seek support in the space of the left, a path that did not work for Sinn Féin after the 2020 elections, when it was the most voted, but remained one seat away from the Fianna Fáil.

In this regard, the leftist People Before Profit-Solidarity (PBP-S) criticized McDonald’s strategy today to ask for transfers of votes from his party to progressive candidates.

Its leader, Richard Boyd Barrett, who obtained 3.1%, maintained that Sinn Féin took too long to offer a “real alternative” of government in the face of the “obvious and historical decline” of centrists and Christian Democrats, rivals since the Civil War (1922-1923) and who have shared power since then.

Forced to look for pacts

With so much equality, the three parties are obliged to seek pacts between themselves and/or with other minority forces, while Harris and Martin have been in favor of re-editing, if needed, the pact of the last legislature.

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CEL

The three leaders could also look at the independent bloc, which obtains 14.6% of the votes, while formations such as the Labor Party and the Social Democrat receive 5 and 5.8%, respectively, and run as possible partners.

Most likely, according to observers, Martin and Harris will join forces again, although their number of seats will determine who leads the negotiations and who will be the new ‘taoiseach’, a position that could be rotating again.