Catherine Connolly has won the 2025 Irish presidential election in a landslide victory. Her candidacy was supported by left and social democratic parties, the Greens and by Sinn Fein.
Connolly secured 63.36% of the vote. Her right wing opponent, Heather Humphreys (Fine Gael), received 29.46%. A third candidate, Jim Gavin (Fianna Fáil), who had withdrawn earlier, received 7.18%. A record 14.81% of votes were spoiled. Turnout was at 45.83% of eligible voters.
Many people in Ireland and internationally have celebrated the win by Connolly, particularly in a period of rising support for the populist right.
Militant Left (CWI Ireland) looks at the election results and what is needed to build a viable socialist and working class opposition.
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Catherine Connolly has won the presidential election by a landslide. Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys garnered scarcely a third of the vote.
Also, in an unprecedented development in presidential elections, hundreds of thousands of spoiled votes were cast.
Connolly’s decisive victory can be attributed to her own qualities as a candidate and the left and republican coalition she mobilised behind her campaign. By sticking doggedly to her convictions Connolly was able to ride out the intense establishment smear campaign unleashed against her in the weeks leading up to polling day.
Three immediate conclusions can be drawn from this result. The first is that the ongoing degeneration of electoral support for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael continues. It is hard to see how this trend can be reversed.
Secondly, there is a clear hunger for an alternative to endless government by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The emergence of a ‘left’ alternative is now posed by Connolly’s victory. Can parties as different as Sinn Fein, Labour, the Social Democrats, Greens and People Before Profit-Solidarity continue to work together in a coherent manner over the coming years? That is an open question.
Thirdly, the ‘Spoil your Vote’ campaign indicates that social media based far right campaigns are beginning to have a resonance well beyond YouTube and X. This is a dangerous development. It is clear a significant section of the working-class are permanently alienated from and antagonistic towards the political mainstream. This cannot be wished away.
A ‘left alternative’ that includes parties with records of aggressive class warfare against the working class, such as Labour and the Greens, would be a political disaster in the making. That these parties’ close involvement in creating the conditions that drive this alienation, such as the housing crisis, must be honestly reckoned with.
What next?
Marxists have a duty to be honest, sober and clear. Given the social forces contesting the presidential election, Militant Left outlined conditional support for the Connolly campaign. The Connolly victory is a very positive development. If it represents a substantial political shift leftwards that is also hugely positive. And, of course, thousands of people, particularly young people, will have been politically activated by the Connolly campaign and her victory.
However, there are few hard class questions posed in a presidential election. How sustainable and coherent can a ‘left alternative’ be when it includes hardened and absolutely unapologetic parties of austerity like Labour and the Greens. Sinn Fein also have a record of passing on the Westminster governments’ austerity cuts in the North, in coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party. Left and socialist organisations that took part in Connolly’s campaign might want to wish that away. It is, however, likely to prove an insurmountable obstacle to anything beyond a bare minimum social democratic programme. One wholly inadequate to the colossal challenges the working class faces.
It remains to be seen how much Catherine Connolly will use the presidential role to comment on acute social and economic issues, for example on the housing crisis and on international issues, like Gaza. The presidential office is limited but could be used as a platform to speak out on behalf of the oppressed and marginalised and to encourage working class movements to organise and resist. However Connolly will come under immense pressure to speak for “all the nation”, to tone down or stop taking stances, and to stick to ‘neutral’ ceremonial roles.
It is a positive that the establishment has been given a massive kicking by the electorate. We repeat our position that a mass party of the working class, based on the trade unions, community groups, wider layers of the working class and the socialist left, is an imperative. This would not be a party aiming for a ‘left government’ which some on the left believe can include pro-capitalist parties, but for building working class power, based on a socialist programme, in our communities and workplaces.