The by-election won’t meaningfully alter the balance of power in Ireland’s key lower house, the Dáil, where the center-right government of Taoiseach Micheál Martin has a stable majority. But it will provide a litmus test for where anti-government sentiment is growing most in urban Ireland — on the socialist left or the populist right.
Saturday’s outcome may depend on how many anti-establishment votes go to Hutch, a 63-year-old gangland chieftain who came excruciatingly close to winning a Dublin Central seat in the 2024 general election.
The winner will be determined by who attracts the most lower-preference votes in a system that encourages voters to rank the candidates. If Hutch finishes in third place, for example, the lower-ranking choices on his own ballots could be crucial in deciding who wins.
Hutch isn’t expected to win outright — polling commissioned by The Irish Times puts him on 14 percent, in third place after the Sinn Féin and the Social Democrat candidates — but he’s built a credible base among working-class voters who cheer a campaign that shuns normal media appearances and mocks traditional politicians as “the real criminals.”
Immigration on the ballot
Martin’s own Fianna Fáil party isn’t a serious contender in either by-election, particularly since the party’s former leader, Bertie Ahern, stepped down as Taoiseach in 2008 amid a corruption scandal. Ahern embarrassed Martin on the campaign trail this month by being surreptitiously recorded making comments critical of Africans and Muslims.
Immigration is potentially the pivotal issue in an impoverished inner-city district with some of Europe’s worst rates of drug addiction, and which has become home to more foreign-born people than any other part of Ireland.