Ireland faces snap election on Nov. 29

DUBLIN — Prime Minister Simon Harris announced a snap election in Ireland for Friday, Nov. 29, in a bid to extend his Fine Gael party’s record 14-year run in power.
The 38-year-old Harris, who became Fine Gael leader and Ireland’s Taoiseach in April, launches the contest with his pro-business and socially progressive party topping the polls on 25 percent in a crowded field.
That lead, if maintained through the coming campaign, is widely forecast to produce a return of the current combination of Harris’ Fine Gael and its fellow center-ground rival, Fianna Fáil, led by Foreign Minister Micheál Martin. Together they have governed Ireland in a stable coalition since 2020 alongside a third partner, the environmentalist Green Party.
“It’s my hope that we will have polling day in this country on the 29th of November. I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead and asking the people for a mandate,” Harris said in an interview with Irish broadcaster RTÉ.
Harris said he would seek the Irish parliament’s official dissolution Friday in a meeting with Ireland’s head of state, President Michael D. Higgins.
Harris is going to the polls now, rather than wait until the legal deadline of March, to capitalize on two key factors: A feel-good October budget that is tucking €2.2 billion in bonus cash into voters’ pockets just in time for Christmas; and stunning disarray in the ranks of the main opposition Sinn Féin.
That Irish republican party, traditionally strong in the neighboring U.K. territory of Northern Ireland, won the most votes in the last Republic of Ireland general election, narrowly overtaking Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for the first time. Sinn Féin’s surprise surge forced the two historic enemies to band together in government.
In opposition, Sinn Féin built what seemed a commanding lead over the government parties in polls — but this year has seen its anti-establishment appeal collapse amid competition from a rising anti-immigrant far right and the party’s self-inflicted damage from scandals and resignations.
The Irish political system typically produces governing coalitions of two or more parties, sometimes propped up by independent lawmakers. No party has won an election outright since Fianna Fáil in 1977 — and no party is expected to come close this time.
There’s a new wrinkle in Ireland’s complex proportional representation system that will make the full results especially hard to call this time: more seats and new battlegrounds.
The next parliament is expanding from 160 to a record-high 174 lawmakers to keep pace with rapid population growth. The number of constituencies is growing, too, from 39 to 43.
Each district elects three to five lawmakers, and voters are free to pick multiple candidates in order of preference. Ballots typically must be recounted more than a dozen times to distribute vote “transfers.” This painstaking process can take several days to determine winners of the final seats in each constituency.
This story has been updated.