During a recent holiday break I had a chance to look in more detail at the June local election results, the potential significance of which was perhaps underplayed in the media at the time because of an over-concentration of attention upon the outcome of what was regarded as the more glamorous European election, writes Garret FitzGerald
However, that election was disproportionately affected by personality factors, as was prominently displayed in the European election East constituency, where two strong Fine Gael candidates secured almost 41 per cent of the vote in an area where on the same day that party obtained only 28 per cent of the local election votes.
Especially in recent years, Fianna Fáil has benefited from our system of three-, four- and five-seat constituencies. This is because that party's share of the vote - averaging nationally between 39 and 44 per cent of the total - has tended to give it a seat bonus; in other words a share of seats some seven percentage points higher than its share of the vote. In the past Fine Gael has also benefited in this way, but in the 2002 general election its vote fell below the level at which these sizes of constituencies have in the past worked in favour of the principal opposition party.
Part of this recurrent seat bonus for larger parties has derived from the fact that many of the votes cast for smaller parties and independents are wasted, owing to the fact that in most constituencies their votes fall short of the number needed to elect a candidate. And even where those who vote for candidates of smaller parties or independents deliberately choose not to pass on their votes to one of the three major parties, the non-transfer of these votes still boosts the share of the total vote with which these parties end up.
But there is another element in the system that has helped Fianna Fáil in particular. This is the fact that in the 13 four-seat constituencies Fianna Fáil's vote share, which in those constituencies ranges between 34 and 47 per cent, automatically secures two of the four seats. Only if its vote in a four-seat constituency was to drop below 34 per cent - which in the past has rarely happened - would Fianna Fáil be likely to end up with one seat rather than two in such constituencies.
And that's not all. For, in most three-seat constituencies, which now account for 18 out of a total of 43, Fianna Fáil's customary 39 to 45 per cent share of the vote, yields two out of three seats, which is between one-half and two-thirds more than its vote would seem to justify.
By contrast, although up to the last general election Fine Gael in a number of five-seat constituencies was holding two seats with 28 to 35 per cent of the vote, when in 2002 its vote dropped below 26 per cent, in most of these areas it lost its second seat. And in several urban four-seat constituencies where its vote dropped below 14 per cent, it also lost the single seat that it had previously held. Finally, it also lost seats in some three-seat constituencies where its vote fell below 26 per cent.
It was these slippages, to what one might describe as an unviable vote for a principal opposition party, combined with a disproportionate number of "fluke" results in 2002, converted Fine Gael's traditional seat-bonus into a negative element. This cost it some dozen additional seats over and above what it might have expected to lose on account of its not-particularly-spectacular five-point drop in its vote. (Fianna Fáil had experienced a similar fall in its vote in 1981 and again in 1992 - and much larger vote falls earlier in its existence.)
All this is not just a matter of history: it could be very relevant to the outcome of the next general election. For in many constituencies even a fairly small increase in the Fine Gael vote, especially if matched by a parallel drop in Fianna Fáil's, would enable the principal opposition party to recover lost seats.
Just as in 2002 the loss of seats by Fine Gael was quite disproportionate to its loss of votes, so also in the next election even a fairly modest gain in votes by that party would enable it to recover a disproportionate number of its 2002 losses.
Of course, that does not mean that this party would return to power - any more than it was in government when, prior to 2002, it had 54 Dáil seats, rather than today's 31. Who will govern after the next election depends upon many other factors besides a recovery in Fine Gael: for example, upon the performance of Labour and several smaller parties; on the number of seats Fianna Fáil may lose to Sinn Féin, especially in working-class areas: and on the survival rate for independents, who in this Dáil do not have the same chance to twist the Government's arm for the benefit of their constituencies as some of them had between 1997 and 2002.
No, who will form the next government is quite impossible to predict at this stage, but one way or the other there is certainly a very strong prospect of a major Fine Gael revival in the next election. One cannot ignore the very substantial increase in that party's share of the vote that has taken place in a dozen Dáil constituencies - not just as between the 2002 general election and the local election last June - that is an invalid comparison - but between this recent local election and that held five years earlier, in June 1999.
Looking at the recent local and European elections, what is particularly striking has been the failure of the media during the previous year or so to spot what was happening within Fine Gael, on the ground. At national level, journalists tend to concentrate on what they call "national politics", namely what is happening in Government and in the Dáil. Even at local level, intra-party constituency activity is usually a closed book to them - except when a row breaks out between rival candidates of the same party.
So, every now and again the media wake up to find that the world of politics has been experiencing an unobserved metamorphosis - under their very noses. The surprise of the press on such occasions gives especial pleasure to the politicians who have been working away quietly within their party organisation to achieve such an outcome. Some day, perhaps, the press may release a journalist from "the national scene", with a view to getting a fix on what is actually happening on the ground.
I should, perhaps, add that I was just as surprised as everyone else at the recent election outcome. That's the nice thing about being out of politics.