What Contributed to Sinn Féin’s surge in popularity during the 2020 general election campaign in Ireland?

Abstract

The campaign leading up to the general election on 8 February 2020 in Ireland was eventful and its result unanticipated. Ireland’s usual bipartisan voting trend was broken with the Sinn Féin party winning the most first preference votes for the first time since August 1923. Throughout the twentieth century, the Sinn Féin party mostly lay dormant. It began its continuous contesting of elections in 1987. However, ten years later in the last general election of the twentieth century, Sinn Féin’s support had only risen to 2.5%. Since then, the party has slowly gone from strength to strength with its percentage of first-preference votes breaking the threshold of double digits in February 2016 with 13.85%. This thesis examines the potential reasons for the leap of over 10% in first preference votes in the space of one general election seen by Sinn Féin. It looks at the social media tactics of the party in comparison to those (or lack thereof) of the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil parties. It examines the messaging of these three parties with reference to each party’s manifesto. Since the economic crash of 2008, Ireland has seen itself in the grips of health and housing crises. The effects of this on the Irish electorate will also be explored with reference to the strong front bench of the Sinn Féin party.