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.) Continue Reading...