Sinn Fein tops Irish exit poll, but coalition parties look set for re-election

By Graham Fahy, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries

DUBLIN (Reuters) -Ireland’s main opposition party Sinn Fein looked on course to narrowly win the most votes at a general election on Friday, but its two main centre-right rivals will likely have enough seats to govern again without it, an exit poll showed.

The exit poll put the left wing Sinn Fein on 21.1%, the centre-right Fine Gael of Prime Minister Simon Harris on 21.0% and like-minded coalition partner Fianna Fail on 19.5%.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail pledged ahead of the election to seek to form a coalition without Sinn Fein, just as they did after the 2020 general election when Sinn Fein also narrowly won the popular vote.

Opinion polls had suggested the three main parties were neck-and-neck ahead of the vote and that Ireland was headed for a broadly similar result to the last election in 2020.

Harris called the election on the heels of a 10.5 billion euro ($11 billion) giveaway budget that began to put money into voters’ pockets during the campaign, largesse made possible by billions of euros of foreign multinational corporate tax revenues.

However a campaign full of missteps for his Fine Gael party, culminating last weekend in a viral clip of Harris walking away from an exasperated care worker, cost them their pre-election lead.

The Government parties also faced widespread frustration during the campaign at their inability to turn the healthiest public finances in Europe into better public services.

They benefited from a slide in support for Sinn Fein, from 30-35% in polls in 2022 and 2023, in part due to anger among its working class base at relatively liberal immigration policies.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail will likely need the support of at least one other smaller party to reach a majority. They currently govern with the Greens.

($1 = 0.9465 euros)

(Reporting by Graham Fahy, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries. Editing by Jane Merriman and Daren Butler)