Instead, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil resurrected their fortunes with virtually identical 23 percent shares of first preference votes, both better than expected — while Sinn Féin slumped to below 12 percent. Independents, among them a babel of new anti-immigrant voices alongside established rural mavericks, topped a staggering 21 percent.
Some Sinn Féin activists bluntly blame their leader for steering the party too close to the wishy-washy center, in hopes of making it possible to forge an eventual governing coalition with its Fianna Fáil rival.
In the final week of the campaign, Sinn Féin switched its advertising strategy to a soft focus on McDonald, bombarding social media with a Mary Lou-fronted video and plastering lampposts with her portrait and the slogan “Change starts here.” It proved a turnoff.
“It’s a humiliation, but we can’t speak up. We don’t pick our leader. A handful of people at the top do,” said the grassroots organizer, who spoke on condition he wasn’t identified because, as he put it, “I don’t want to make my life a living hell. But something has to change and change fast.”
Anti-immigrant pressure
McDonald has cut a glum figure in her post-election posts and at the Royal Dublin Society conference hall in Dublin, one of several ballot-counting centers where full results aren’t expected to be announced until Wednesday night at the earliest. The glacial pace reflected Ireland’s complex system of proportional representation that encourages voters to pick candidates in order of preference — this time on absurdly long ballot papers featuring dozens of candidates.
McDonald attributed Sinn Féin’s lackluster performance, in part, to public confusion. She said many voters were wrongly treating her party as part of the governing establishment, even though it’s the main opposition in the parliament, Dáil Éireann, and never been in power south of the border.
