Irish Presidential Election - Probably My Final Call

Well, who would have seen that coming? Jim Gavin, the candidate for Fianna Fáil, suspends his campaign after a disastrous campaign that was ridden with gaffes and awkward moments. The final straw was the fallout of his second debate performance after it came to light that a former tenant if his had accidentally overpaid him six month's rent back in 2009, during the great recession. The tenant had forgotten to cancel a standing order after moving out, so he overpaid Jim Gavin by €3,300. Instead of reimbursing him for this, he said he would repay him and proceeded to dodge the question for years. That was until a week ago, when it came out during his election campaign and it was put to him during the second presidential debate, a place he could hide from it no longer.

The fallout in Fianna Fáil for this will be enormous. Although Jim Gavin has suspended his campaign, he will remain on the ballot, albeit with a much reduced turnout. The Fianna Fáil grassroots had been reluctant to support him as he had no direct political experience, but Taoiseach Micheál Martin pushed through his preferred candidate. The grassroots expected results and it's fair to say it has blown up in all of their faces. The rental debacle it turns out was common knowledge at the time, as the ex tenants had been none other than an editor at The Sunday World. Anyone who has brought up the possibility of this becoming public knowledge was dismissed by the party leadership.

Where does this leave the election now? With Jim Gavin no longer campaigning, the election will now be a straight shootout between the government candidates, Heather Humphreys of Fine Gael and the independent candidate, Catherine Connolly, backed by an alliance of Irish left wing parties. With generational discontent with both of the major political parties in government and a united left wing front against the government, I expect this not to work out well for the government. Humphreys would have hoped to avail of transfers from Gavin but many of those voters will now stay at home. That's to say nothing of the old school Republican core of Fianna Fáil who would never vote for Fine Gael and would even consider voting for Connolly due to her support for neutrality and a United Ireland. Expect low turnout and a lot of spoiled votes, but also a high youth turnout.

Indeed, I would emphasize the youth turnout. Connolly's campaign has enormous momentum behind it. Her social media team is miles ahead of Humphreys and her message is propagating in a similar way to Mamdani's (though I would hesitate to compare them beyond that). With Fine Gael behind in the polls, they have resorted to attacking her on everything that might stick, but it's backfiring and almost nothing is sticking, similar to how scaremongering about Trump never stopped Trump from winning elections. Negative campaigning has been a consistent loser over the last decade across a whole range of electoral environments. One candidate has a vision for president that she's consistent on (whether you like that vision or not) whereas the other candidate is running on defending the party line in government. This has never been a winning formula for Irish presidential elections and is core to why Fine Gael so consistently underperforms in them.

I was going to wait until after the final debate next week to give my final call, but I've seen enough and barring a drastic last minute change of form from either candidate, this will be my my final call.

5% Catherine Connolly to win the election for President of Ireland at 73c (good to 90c)

Based on what I'm seeing, I do believe we're about to witness a political earthquake over here, and I'm saying this as someone who generally doesn't have much time for the political left. In this group we are ultimately in the business of assessing the probabilities (and therefore fair value odds) of various outcomes, regardless of what feelings we may have about them personally. I have mixed feelings about this election personally (and so do many people I know) but ultimately all the evidence for me points to Connolly winning next weekend.