By anybody’s standards, Sinn Féin’s electoral performance in the south has been disastrous. Securing barely half the seats targeted in the local government election and struggling to improve on a poor showing in the European elections last time around, Mary Lou McDonald’s party has been left licking its wounds .
There’s numerous theories about why the Sinn Féin vote slumped so dramatically in the weeks leading up to polling. Poor messaging and flip-flopping on the immigration/open border issue has been widely cited, while it’s also suggested that the party’s ordinarily effective ground campaign was mysteriously inconspicuous. In the local government elections, the party secured an 11.8% share of the popular vote, an increase of more than two percentage points, while in the European poll it gained an 11.14% vote share, down slightly on 2019.
Few things illustrate the lacklustre performance better than Tuesday’s exclusion of Maurice Quinlivan from the race to be the first elected mayor of Limerick. Ahead of last Friday, the Sinn Féin TD was widely regarded as favourite for the post but was excluded ahead of three other candidates, including two independents.
At the beginning of the year, it was all there for the taking with Mrs McDonald earmarked to be next taoiseach but now it’s a party rife with uncharacteristic recrimination and finger-pointing.
With a Westminster election just four weeks away, there has been some speculation that Sinn Féin’s poor polling in the south could impact on its performance in the north on July 4.
In the north, the party is aiming to claim the so-called hat-trick, which would see it take the greatest number of seats in the general election for the first time, adding to its successes in 2022′s assembly election and last year’s council election. Currently, Sinn Féin lags one seat behind the DUP, which in 2019 returned eight MPs out of 18.
The first thing to note is that despite being an all-Ireland party, Sinn Féin has two distinct operations on either side of the border, reflecting two very different polities.
While resources are pooled and leadership figures will canvas in both the south and the north, the messages are distinct. The narrative north of the border is about “strong leadership and positive change”, reflecting the party’s position in the Stormont government but also its opposition to the Tory administration in London.
It’s not a sophisticated or nuanced message by any means, and is arguably just what the electorate wants. Polling suggests people in the north are much more likely to vote based on traditional allegiances, or to put it crudely, along tribal lines.
Waiting lists, the cost of living crisis, and the poor state of our roads may all get a mention during campaigning but rarely do they dictate in which box people place their X.
Sinn Féin’s positioning as polar opposite to the DUP also helps its cause. The more the DUP complains about the Irish Sea border, Irish language legislation and the Provisional IRA’s campaign, the more nationalists and republicans will seek to give it a bloody nose, which they do by voting Sinn Féin.
Whereas voters in the south – or the roughly half of the registered electorate that chose to vote last week – are clearly influenced by current issues and make their mind up much closer to polling day. Shifts in northern politics, like the rise of the middle ground, are glacial in comparison to the volatile, dynamic nature of the Republic’s electoral contests, a process that appears to have greatly intensified over recent months.
However, what the Sinn Féin southern slump does highlight is that the party is fallible and that its recent rise was neither inexorable or unstoppable. The electorate likes a winner and Sinn Féin would much prefer to contesting the Westminster election from a position of strength across the island.
Due to the nature of northern politics, a significant fall in the Sinn Féin vote on July 4, or any slippage at all, is unlikely. Yet what happens south of the border can’t be ignored and if the downward trend were to continue, it’ll only be a matter of time before voters in the north start casting a more critical eye down the ballot paper.
