As I am drafting this post, the Irish are counting the votes in yesterday’s election. The exit polls published last night showed a neck-and-neck race between the top three parties. Despite the closeness of the vote, one party is not in contention to be the leading party in parliament when the count finishes sometime on Monday or Tuesday. And the reason for that has to do with how many candidates that party had running.
As discussed several days ago, Ireland uses a “single transferable vote” system to elect its members of parliament from multi-member constituencies. (Constituencies — depending on population — elect either three, four, or five members). If you look at the candidate list for each constituency, the two traditional “major” parties run two or three candidates per constituency. When you run multiple candidates, any excess vote from your main candidate goes to your other candidates. If you have a strong performance in a constituency, you can elect two or three members from that constituency. Fianna Fail is running only one candidate in six constituencies, two candidates in twenty-three constituencies, three candidates in eight constituencies, and four candidates in two constituencies (both five-member constituencies). Fianna Gael is running only one candidate in four constituencies, two candidates in twenty-seven constituencies, and three candidates in eight constituencies. By contrast, for Sinn Fein, there is one constituency in which they have no candidates, thirty-four constituencies in which they only have one candidate, and four constituencies (three of which are five-member constituencies and one of which is a four-member constituency) in which they have two candidates.
If the exit polls are true, Sinn Fein would have had a good shot at picking up a second or third member in multiple constituencies in which they only ran one member. Because they only ran one member in these constituencies, we will never for sure know how many seats they could have won. (Projections — based on partial counts — are giving Sinn Fein between 30-40 members. which will put it behind Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael. But assuming that most transfers would have gone to a second Sinn Fein candidate, Sinn Fein would have been contending for another 5-10 seats.)
In the United States, we have had several elections that prove the importance of having a candidate on the ballot. In 2010, everybody thought that Michael Castle was going to be the next Senator from Delaware filling Joe Biden’s old seat. Several of the leading Democrats in the state passed on the race thinking that the odds of winning were too slim. In a shocking result, Representative Castle lost the Republican primary to a Tea Party candidate, and the Democratic candidate — Chris Coons — won easily. In 2012, Senator Richard Lugar lost the Republican Primary in Indiana. Instead of being a long shot to win the general election, Joe Donnelly went on to win by over six percent.
The lesson from this week’s example and these past examples is the importance of finding good candidates for every race on the ballot. If no Democrat runs, that is a race that the Democratic Party can’t win. Even when the Republican Party has a strong incumbent or a strong favorite for the open seat, anything can happen. And you need a candidate in place just in case the unexpected happens.
Four weeks ago, looking at the results of the most recent local elections, Sinn Fein thought that they would be struggling to avoid losing their current seats. As a result, they followed a rather defensive plan for slating candidates. Today, they are regretting not having followed a more aggressive strategy designed to maximize potential gains.
There is an old saying that a week is an eternity in politics. Even in a country like Ireland with a short period of time between filing and the election, things can dramatically change. In the U.S., we have months between filing and the primary election followed by more months between the primary election and the general election. That is a lot of eternities in which circumstances can change dramatically. If you don’t have a candidate in place to take advantage if an opportunity develops, a potential blue wave will merely be a blue trickle.
