When the counting centres are finally closed, signalling an end to the 35th Dáil election, it is almost certain that the only major change will have been the identity of the fringe third grouping which will prop up a renewed Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil coalition following the decimation of the Green Party.
Simon Harris’s Fine Gael may have endured a tumultuous campaign, defined by self-inflicted mistakes, but the end result will inevitably involve the party returning to government, meaning it will have held office for almost two decades by the time the next Dáil election is scheduled to be held in 2029.
Similarly, Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil is likely to emerge as the largest party in terms of seats, giving it pole position when negotiations about government formation begin in earnest in the days ahead.
Last Friday evening’s exit poll would have given Sinn Féin reason to be more optimistic than it could have believed was possible with indication that the party was set to top the poll.
As it transpired, the exit poll over-estimated Sinn Féin’s vote share and the party ended up in third position with just under 20% of the overall vote.
Just five months ago, Sinn Féin performed disastrously in the local elections, securing 11.8% of the vote share. Some commentators predicted that the Sinn Féin bubble had burst.
The series of scandals rocking the party over recent months only served to suggest the party was under serious pressure.
In that context, securing the vote share it did in this election represented a significant advance on where it was only a matter of months ago, and Mary Lou McDonald and her team will take a great deal of comfort in the fact the party had a very good election campaign in which it clawed back significant support.
Sinn Fein’s chief undoing was its refusal to take the populist line and lead in criticising the government over the immigration crisis that engulfed the Irish state over the past year.
The voting coalition it had carefully assembled over many years in opposition – including the urban working class, large swathes of rural voters, as well as the more nationalist leaning parts of the electorate – began to fracture over immigration, and it never managed to reassemble it.
The uncomfortable fact for Sinn Féin is that the governing parties did not win because they performed particularly well in this election.
The combined vote share of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail constitutes the worst ever performance of the two parties. Their coalition partner, the Green Party, has all but disappeared.
Micheál Martin and Simon Harris owe their election victory to the fact Sinn Féin has not yet been able to convince a sufficient number of voters across the Irish state that it can be trusted to run the government without the support of either of the two establishment parties who have dominated the political landscape throughout the state’s entire existence.
On the plus side for Sinn Féin, demographics are in its favour.
The exit poll showed that Mary Lou McDonald was, by some distance, the party leader most preferred to serve as taoiseach amongst the under-50 population, and amongst those age cohorts it was comfortably the most popular party.
Neither party making up the centre-right coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has anywhere near the numbers to serve without the other in a government that does not involve Sinn Féin.
That is significant because it confirms the new electoral and political landscape in the third decade of 21st century Ireland that is far removed from the picture just 22 years ago when Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could muster almost 2/3 of all votes between them, and Fianna Fáil come within a handful of seats of forming a single-party government.
Governments typically tend to lose elections more than oppositions win them.
Trump’s triumph was a consequence of Americans feeling the pinch economically and reacting adversely to the excesses of the progressive agenda and immigration concerns.
Similarly, Britons grew weary and disillusioned by a succession of Tory governments at Westminster, leaving the field open for Keir Starmer to shape Labour into a government-ready party.
A renewed Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael coalition government will mean that the two parties will have been inextricably linked to one another and bound by the decisions of government for a decade and beyond by the time the electorate once again head to the polls for the next Dáil contest.
Fianna Fáil’s vote share was the second worst in its history yet was a success because, assessed within the new electoral paradigm, just beating Sinn Féin and Fine Gael constitutes a success.
Sinn Féin has “altered the political landscape” in the words of Mary Lou McDonald, and she is right. It is the only major all-Ireland party and it has forced a realignment of politics in the south.
But taking the next step is going to necessitate building and maintaining a relationship of trust with a section of Irish voters who remain to be fully convinced of Sinn Féin’s credentials and capacity to lead the nation in a new direction.