Elections are decided not by the electorate as a whole, but by the people who turn up on the day and cast valid votes in the contest.
Supporters for both Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys and Independent Catherine Connolly will be trying to get out the vote in Friday’s election but there are widespread expectations that turnout will be low.
In addition, there is, for the first time, a concerted campaign to persuade people to spoil their votes.
What does a low turnout look like?
In recent presidential elections, turnouts have been much lower than in general elections, partly because they are what political scientists call “second order elections”, which voters don’t see as important as a general election.
RM Block
Turnout for the general election last year was just shy of 60 per cent. In the last presidential election in 2018, it was just 44 per cent.
In the 2011 presidential election it was 56 per cent and in the 1997 election it was 48 per cent. You have to go back 35 years, to Mary Robinson’s election in 1990 to see a turnout that was on a similar level to a general election when 64 per cent voted.
It’s widely accepted that the Electoral Register (standing at 3,612,957, according to the Electoral Commission) contains a lot of duplication and other mistakes (including the registration of deceased people) that inflate the size of the register, and therefore has the effect of pushing down the percentage turnout. In other words, the real turnout rate is probably several percentage points higher than the official figure.
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But that would still leave a rate of turnout hovering at about 50 per cent for the last presidential election, which is well below general election levels. And there are fears that turnout could be considerably lower than this on Friday.
“On average since the 1960s, turnout at presidential elections is 14 points lower than general elections,” said Theresa Reidy, a professor in the department of government and politics at University College Cork, where she specialises in voting behaviour.
“There is every reason to believe that this election will undershoot the trend. There are just two candidates, voters are not happy with this choice, there is an active spoil the vote campaign, which will likely depress turnout further, and the campaign has been lacklustre.”
“I think it will follow in the footsteps of the historically low turnout elections of 2024 and probably fall below 40 per cent,” said Adrian Kavanagh of Maynooth University. He suggested something around 37 per cent would be likely.
How does a low turnout affect the result?
Research suggests that a variety of factors influence turnout but one of the most obvious is that older, residentially settled voters who are better off are more likely to vote than younger, less affluent, less settled people. That would seem to work to the advantage of Humphreys.
But Eoin O’Malley, who teaches politics at Dublin City University, wonders about that.
He said that if there was a movement behind Connolly, similar to that recorded during the 2018 abortion reference, “we could see the youth vote more enthusiastic than older voters”.
“That’s what happened in 2018. So contrary to the conventional wisdom, a low turnout might not be too concerning for Connolly.”
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A further unknown is the impact of the spoil the vote campaign. Spoiled voters were about 18,000 in the last two elections but the poll suggests it could be much higher this time, perhaps as high as between 70,000 and 80,000. Among other things, that would delay the first count significantly, as every individual spoiled vote has to be scrutinised.
The sense among many observers and participants is that the turnout question adds an element of unpredictability to Saturday’s count. But could it be that unpredictable? Few think so.
