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How Ireland's left can build momentum after the 2024 elections

ECDA recently sat down with Clare O'Donoghue Velikic of ODV Digital to discuss the recent Irish elections and the possible steps to break free from the centrist dominance of the past 100 years.


Clare is the Founder and Director of ODV Digital - a digital agency helping progressive causes globally. Clare is a digital campaigning expert with 20+ years experience including at Facebook for nine years, during which she founded and led the Politics and Government marketing team for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

 

Ireland’s 2024 national elections have led to a government composed of two parties that are very well-known to the Irish people: Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are both centrist-right parties and have been in power for the last 100 years. But Clare sees untapped potential in Ireland’s growing dissatisfaction with the status quo. She thinks that unity, grassroots organizing, and smarter digital strategies can transform the next election– finally offering something truly new.


Bar chart showing Irish political party vote shares and changes since 2020 vs 2024. Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael have the largest shares.
Chart: Tomas Doherty/breakingnews.ie Created with Datawrapper 

The outcome of the 2024 national elections in Ireland, in November, was a mixed bag for progressives. Sinn Féin, the biggest progressive party, did not do as well as they had hoped (or as well as polls all throughout the previous year predicted, when Sinn Féin was riding a wave of popular support and disenchantment with the centrist-right government). Still, the party ended up with a voter share just a few percentage points below that of the 2020 elections –– which back then was celebrated as a huge win. And it truly was: for the past 100 years, Irish politics had been dominated by its two biggest centrist-right parties: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But in 2020, for the first time, left-wing Sinn Féin ended up with a voter share just as large as those of the two dominant parties, signalling growing progressive sentiments in the country. The party managed to sustain that result this time around, even if they did not make it into government. The Labour Party and the Social Democrats each nearly doubled their seats. On the other hand, the Green Party, a coalition partner in the last government, now lost almost all its seats.


‘The next election starts today'


Clare O’Donaghue-Velikic of ODV Digital
Clare O’Donaghue-Velikic of ODV Digital

Clare thinks there is still a lot of untapped potential on the left side of Irish politics. “The situation in Ireland is different from that in most other European countries,” she says. “On the one hand, politics has been dominated for the past 100 years by these centrist-right forces. It almost seems as though the Irish people don’t really like to rock the boat too much. On the other hand, a sense of dissatisfaction with the status-quo has been noticeably growing in recent years: especially in working class and under-serviced communities. In many European countries, far-right parties have already successfully tapped into those feelings – but this has not happened in Ireland. Our far-right is not yet organized enough, they are internally divided, and our voting system does not work in their favour either.”


Clare thinks this creates a unique opportunity for progressives in the country. She believes that a left-wing movement can still effectively address the frustration and disenfranchisement of a lot of people in Ireland, building a movement of positive change on those widely shared sentiments and experiences. The reason this has not quite happened yet, she thinks, is because the left too, has been divided. And she sees a lot of untapped digital organizing potential on this side of the political spectrum as well.


“The mental shift from campaigning to organizing has not yet fully taken place in Ireland; I’m really hoping that it will in the coming years. We need to stop thinking about the digital world as a broadcast channel through which we announce things to people, and start seeing it as a community, as an organizing tool, as a way to build relationships that turn into long-term votes. The day after these elections, I told everyone I work with: the next election starts today. We can’t just scramble a social media plan four weeks before the elections––we need to start building these relationships right now.”

This has to be done from an organizing perspective, she emphasizes, rather than from a broadcast media perspective. “Building those community connections, having dialogues, asking questions. I think the model we can look at for inspiration is that of influencers on social media: yes, they have their own things to say and ways to say them, but they are also always focused on building a following of people who feel connected to them.”


Inspiring models


Successful campaign for reproductive rights. Credit: abortionrightscampaign.ie
Successful campaign for reproductive rights. Credit: abortionrightscampaign.ie

Another inspiring model for Irish organizers to look at, O’Donoghue Velikic thinks, are the Irish movements around two big referenda: one legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015, the other ensuring the right to abortion in 2018.


“In both cases, progressive parties came together under coalition banners—Vote Yes and Together for Yes—led by existing grassroots organizers. That unity worked so well, and it created a feeling of momentum and national change that brought the country together around these very progressive topics. This is what I would love to see happen during the next elections, too. I think what’s needed to make that happen is a combination of a big, unifying, top-down idea – one that progressives can all gather under, despite their internal differences – and lots of flexibility at the bottom: grassroots organizing from the bottom-up, involving real people and allowing individual candidates to connect with local communities, understanding which topics are felt to be important in those places.


Marie Sherlock, source: Labour.ie
Marie Sherlock, source: Labour.ie

You could see how well that worked during the 2024 elections in Labour’s Marie Sherlock’s campaign: she was allowed to campaign on constituency-specific issues that were familiar to her: her focus on childcare and climate justice for ordinary people really resonated in the Dublin Central constituency. She ended up securing a seat.”




The TikTok Taoiseach


In the meantime, Clare has been keeping a close eye on Meta, her former employer. With Google set to ban political ads in 2025, fears loom that Meta might follow suit, and that would be bad news, she thinks. “It’s still the most effective tool for targeted campaigning, and it’s transparent and accountable. We saw a big chunk of ad money go to Meta again this election.”


Simon Harris, “the TikTok Taoiseach”, visiting a hockey pitch - @simon_harristd
Simon Harris, “the TikTok Taoiseach”, visiting a hockey pitch - @simon_harristd

While TikTok has become more important in the country, its usefulness in politics is still debatable, Claresays. There are success stories like that of Simon Harris, Ireland's former ‘Taoiseach’ (Prime Minister). Harris has garnered significant popularity on TikTok, earning him the nickname ‘The TikTok Taoiseach’. Harris’ adept use of the platform to engage with the public contributed to his widespread recognition. He frequently posts off-the-cuff videos that resonate with a younger audience and have enhanced his profile.











“But then there is the example of Clare Daly, an Irish Member of the European parliament, She has over half a million followers on TikTok and she still lost her seat during the last European elections. A large chunk of her TikTok following was international, and that doesn’t help you during elections: you need to connect with your constituents. This is why I always tell people not to focus on vanity metrics: they might not say much.”

Which doesn’t mean that digital organizers cannot learn from TikTok, Clare states. “What you saw a lot during this election, and this is something that works very well, is that people take TikTok videos – or just videos in the clippy, vertical, authentic style of the platform – and use those as paid ads or posts on Instagram or Facebook. So I think the importance of TikTok lies more in its influence on the style of content development, and that’s where organizers need to be taking notes. I think that is more important than utilizing the platform itself at this point. It's got to be short, authentic, it has got to be fast and you have got to have a really strong hook.”



Micheál Martin, the new Taoiseach, using TikTok-style editing on Facebook


Looking ahead, the mixed results of the 2024 elections, compared with the success of nation-wide progressive movements around abortion and same-sex marriage in the past, serve as both a wake-up call and a blueprint for progressives in Ireland. The potential for a stronger progressive movement is evident. The path to achieving it, according to Clare lies in unity, adaptability, and meaningful community engagement: a sustained, grassroots-driven approach combined with innovative digital strategies that go beyond surface-level metrics. All held together by a unifying, clear narrative at the top: a shared banner to rally under. Embracing these strategies, progressives have the opportunity to address the growing disempowerment among voters before far-right actors have a chance to do so, and chart a course toward a more inclusive Ireland that is not afraid of rocking the boat.

 








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