General election 2024

The Government has confirmed that a general election will take place before the new year. Although the precise date has not been confirmed, 29 November 2024 is mooted as the mostly likely date that polls will open.

Taoiseach Simon Harris TD and Tánaiste Micheál Martin TD have both commented that a general election is set to take place prior to Christmas 2024, while Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman TD has said that he expects the election to take place on 29 November.

While the precise date of the election remains to be confirmed, we already have a fair idea of what to expect during this campaign, as well as some of the unique dynamics which will make election 2024 the most fascinating in the history of the State.

Campaign goals

Three parties will be aiming to win this election, and all three will have reason to believe that they stand a chance of leading the next government.

Fine Gael, touting its ‘new energy’ under Taoiseach Simon Harris TD, is rising in polls, giving it a chance of an election victory having finished third in 2020, achieving its worst share of the popular vote since 1948 under Leo Varadkar TD’s leadership. Harris has shown himself to be highly effective at managing the media, which has seen Fine Gael lead the polls since his assumption of the party leadership earlier this year.

Harris’ goal will be a straightforward one, continue the momentum that he has generated since he took over the party leadership and lead Fine Gael into an unprecedented fourth term of government. If successful, Fine Gael would be the first party since Fianna Fáil in 1969 to win a fourth consecutive term in government. However, in spite of Harris’ successful start, it is far from a safe bet that Fine Gael will be the largest party, and almost certainly impossible for the party to win a majority, something which last happened in 1977 when Jack Lynch led Fianna Fáil to an election landslide with 50.6 per cent of the vote.

Although Micheál Martin has led Fianna Fáil to its three worst general election results in the party’s history, he is arguably the party’s best asset, standing as the most popular political leader in the State. Leading the party into a fourth general election, Martin has matched a feat only achieved by Charlie Haughey and Éamon de Valera.

How the party will distinguish itself against its coalition partners is not clear, but it is plausible that Fianna Fáil returns to its roots of arguing that it is ‘better at governing’ than Fine Gael, with Darragh O’Brien having made the case earlier this year at the Fianna Fáil ard fheis that his party has ‘made a difference’ since it returned to government in 2020 after nine years formally on opposition benches.

The main opposition party, Sinn Féin, has come through a bruising period of underperformance in the local and European elections, as well as a number of scandals involving key figures in the party, which has resulted in the party falling to third in some opinion polls, having consistently led in the polls since election 2020 until earlier this year.

The key to turning the tide for Sinn Féin will be bringing housing back to the top of the political agenda, with the party having released a number of key housing policy documents, centred on increasing supply and affordability.

The other question surrounds who props up the larger parties in government after the next election. While it is plausible that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil could win a majority without need for outside support, the possibility of an increase in support for the Social Democrats or Labour on the left, along with the possibility of Independent Ireland on the right or independent candidates winning seats in large numbers, means that what happens among the smaller parties will be almost more important than any other factors in determining the ideological motivations of the next government.

This will also be dependent on the fate of the Green party, which will almost certainly lose seats in the election. However, if the Greens can match their local election performance, that may be enough to give the party up to six seats in the next Dáil, which could prove vital in prospective coalition negotiations.

The 34th Dáil

The next Dáil – the 34th since it began sitting – will be the largest in the history of the State, following the review into constituency boundaries by An Coimisiún Toghcháin, with 174 TDs to be elected to the next Dáil. The Commission’s recommendations expanded the number of constituencies with three TDs, which is likely to produce positive results for the larger parties, with smaller parties’ TDs often relying on vote transfers in larger constituencies.

However, if the nine political parties elected in 2020 – plus the newly formed Independent Ireland – maintain their presence in the Dáil, the 34th Dáil will also have the highest number of political parties in the history of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

This campaign will be fiercely contested, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil both facing the complicated tasks of pipping each other to seats in order to beat heir coalition partners, while weaving the web of ensuring that their parties can claim the credit for the Government’s popular measures, while shifting the blame for the Government’s unpopular measures to their coalition partners.

Sinn Féin will be determined to have a similar election to 2020, in which the party came back from poor local and European election results just months prior to winning the popular vote in the general election.