Ireland’s Main Parties Edge Out Sinn Féin, Early Election Results Show

Voters in Ireland have set the stage for a return of the grand coalition government that has led their country since 2020, resisting an anti-incumbent wave that has swept across the United States and Europe.

The vote count was close on Sunday evening, two days after voters went to the polls, but the trend suggested that Ireland’s two main center-right parties had performed strongly enough to enter coalition talks — a process that could take weeks before the full shape of the government is clear.

Sinn Féin, the flagship Irish nationalist party, was on track to finish slightly behind the incumbents, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, a lackluster showing that will probably consign it to several more years in opposition.

At one level, the vote was an endorsement of continuity, delivering a result not unlike that of four and a half years ago. But the stability in Ireland’s political center ground masked volatility on the fringes, where anxiety over immigration fueled bids by several independents and other insurgent candidates.

With none of Ireland’s parties projected to gain enough seats to win an outright majority, a period of intense political horse-trading was always the most likely outcome of the vote.

The drama in the election, such as it was, was supplied by Sinn Féin, which had seemed a governing-party-in-waiting before collapsing in the polls earlier this year. It recovered some of its lost ground in the voting but fell short of a breakthrough and seemed likely to remain on the sidelines.