Research suggests that voters in European and local elections focus more on candidates than on parties, argue Richard Sinnott and James McBride.
As the votes are being counted in the local and European elections next weekend, the question will inevitably be: What does all this mean for the Government and for the political parties? Any attempt to answer this must be benchmarked against the very distinctive voting patterns that have obtained in local and European elections in recent decades.
Since the early 1960s, there have been seven local elections. As the first accompanying graph shows, five of the seven involved substantial losses for Fianna Fáil. The two exceptional cases, when Fianna Fáil more or less held its own by comparison with the previous general election, were 1985 and 1999.
The pattern of support for Independents in local elections is even clearer - support for Independent candidates was up substantially by comparison with the previous general election in all seven local elections over the past four decades. In contrast, Fine Gael has only once increased its vote in local elections in this period (in 1979) and Labour has made (slight) advances in local elections by comparison with the preceding general election on only two occasions (1960 and 1991).
Obviously, we cannot infer that the only movement of votes in these local elections has been from Fianna Fáil to Independents. This is because what we are dealing with here is the net effect of various movements of votes between various parties. Nonetheless, this net pattern in local elections is pretty clear - Fianna Fáil tends to lose votes and Independents tend to gain.
Remarkably, as the second graph shows, this pattern is more or less repeated in the five Euro elections that have been held so far. The Fianna Fáil vote has dropped substantially in four of the five (1999 being the exception) and Independents have gained in all five (albeit modestly in 1994).
One interpretation of all this is that the voters have been "delivering a message" to the government of the day. There is some plausibility in this view in so far as Fianna Fáil was in power during most of the elections in question. The alternative interpretation - and one that explains the fact that it is the Independents who tend to gain in the local and Euro elections - is that the voters are voting not against the government but for the candidates, and specifically for the candidates they believe will deal with the issues and represent their interests at either local or European level.
In one sense, this is personality voting, a phenomenon often decried by commentators because it ignores the "issues". This is an oversimplification, however, since personality can become the issue, either because of past performance, in or outside politics, or because the personality in question is associated with a particular cause.
This point about personality being the issue applies to party candidates as well as Independent candidates, especially in the European elections. In addition to indicating that certain Independents are doing well and are likely to be elected, the opinion polls in this campaign suggest parties are doing well where they have big personalities contesting the seats and, in some instances, where they have big intra-party clashes between big personalities.
The importance of candidates/ personalities over parties is confirmed, in both the local and European contests, by the postering strategies of most parties and most candidates. It is clear that, with the exception of Sinn Féin and the Greens, most candidates are hiding their party light under a bushel, presumably in the belief that loyal party supporters will see the party connection in the small print and those who are not party loyalists will not be put off by too strong an association with the somewhat battered images of the parties.
All of this also means that, when the pundits and the party strategists sit down next weekend to tease out the long-term implications of the results (long-term being, by definition, up to the next election), they should proceed with caution.
Being the most personality-driven, the Euro elections will be the least helpful guide to future trends. If the Euro elections are candidate-centred, then parties' claims to major long-term advances for themselves or major setbacks for their opponents ought to be substantially discounted. In short, the results will not be as good for the winners or as bad for the losers as the raw numbers may suggest.
The local elections may be a somewhat better guide but, as is evident from the graphs, extrapolation from local-election results to the next general election would be extremely hazardous.
Local election results do, however, matter from the point of view of the recruitment and grooming of candidates for future elections. They also matter from the point of view of long-term and short-term party morale. And, arguably, they matter most for the parties (Sinn Féin and the Greens) that have put the party to the forefront of their campaigns and for the party (Fine Gael) whose recent fortunes leave it in most need of a morale boost.
The post-mortem will, in all likelihood, also have to address the issue of turnout. The closeness of the contests in the Euro constituencies may lead to some increase in turnout but the citizenship referendum is unlikely to do so. Previous experience suggests that turnout will be driven by the local elections and, as the third graph illustrates, the trend in turnout in local elections is not a happy one.
This is particularly so in the Dublin region, where turnout in the last combined Euro and local poll was a mere 36 per cent. And the downward trend may well be exacerbated by the absence of the more than 100 dual-mandate candidates.
However, there is still time for the parties, the candidates and the editorial writers to do their bit to boost participation.
Richard Sinnott is director of the Public Opinion and Political Behaviour Research Programme at ISSC (Institute for the Study of Social Change), UCD. James McBride is director of the Irish Social Science Data Archive, also at ISSC.