Irish exit poll points to three-way election tie

Ireland’s election is in a three-way dead heat after Leo Varadkar clawed back support in the final days of a campaign in which he trailed the opposition, according to an exit poll by the national broadcaster and other media.

The poll suggests the prime minister’s centre-right Fine Gael secured 22.4 per cent of the vote in the general election on Saturday; opposition Sinn Féin nationalists were at 22.3 per cent; and the centrist opposition Fianna Fáil was at 22.2 per cent — findings that point to a hung parliament and difficult talks to form a stable government.

Mr Varadkar had slipped to third place in the last pre-election survey. But the exit poll of more than 5,000 voters on Saturday suggested he had edged back to finish in a three-way tie with Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Féin, and Micheál Martin, the Fianna Fáil leader.

Many analysts had written off Mr Varadkar after a string of poor opinion poll ratings in the three-week campaign. One senior ally of the taoiseach was quick on Saturday night to say his party had “won the election, defying all the conventional wisdom”.

The exit poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.3 per cent. With the ultimate result heavily dependent on vote transfers in the proportional representation voting system, the outcome is too close to call before the count begins on Sunday.

It is likely that Fine Gael will vie with Fianna Fáil for the most seats as Ms McDonald’s party did not run enough candidates to win. But Sinn Féin appears to have broken a long pattern of underperformance in the ballot box despite high opinion survey ratings, changing a political landscape dominated for a century by the “big two” duopoly of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

Mr Varadkar’s minority government had a testing campaign, struggling to gain traction with the electorate for rapid economic growth and the taoiseach’s Brexit diplomacy to secure a deal to keep open the border with Northern Ireland.

His party was heavily criticised for the lack of affordable housing and health service failings, with many voters saying they felt left behind by the country’s rebound from financial crisis, and the achievement of full employment.

Fine Gael has been in power since it ousted Fianna Fáil in 2011 at the height of the crash that led to an international bailout.

Talks to form the next government will be complex. Mr Varadkar indicated during the campaign that he was open to a “grand coalition” with Fianna Fáil but Mr Martin rejected the idea — never tried before — because he argued that voters wanted a change of government.

Both Mr Varadkar and Mr Martin have insisted they would not enter government with Sinn Féin, which was the political wing of the IRA during its deadly campaign to force Britain from Northern Ireland that ended after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The gay son of an Indian immigrant, Mr Varadkar became an icon of Ireland’s rapid liberalisation when he backed a 2018 referendum to overturn a constitutional ban on abortion. Ireland had voted three years earlier to introduce same-sex marriage, the first country to do so by referendum.

Mr Varadkar succeeded Enda Kenny in 2017, one year after Fine Gael struck a deal in which Mr Martin agreed to support key parliamentary votes from the opposition benches.

The confidence-and-supply pact was prolonged in late 2018 because of Brexit uncertainty. The way was cleared for the election when Brussels settled a new UK Brexit treaty that maintains open borders with Northern Ireland, Mr Varadkar’s top priority during difficult talks with Boris Johnson and his predecessor Theresa May.

The 160-member Dáil assembly does not sit again until February 20 but it remains unclear whether agreement on a new government will be reached by that point. It took almost three months to form a government after the last election, in 2016.

The support of smaller parties and Independent MPs will be needed for a Dáil majority, although analysts and many politicians have said a fragmented parliament could lead to another minority government.

The exit poll was carried out for broadcasters RTÉ and TG4, the Irish Times and University College Dublin.