Election 2011 - a watershed

David McCullagh finds that even before a vote is cast, Irish politics has changed very fundamentally.

Sometimes, in the middle of an election campaign, details become so dominant that the big picture can be lost.

So it was with the list of candidates nominated for this General Election.

It wasn't just that this is the biggest number of candidates ever nominated - though it is, at 564, easily smashing the previous record of 484 set in 1997.

Nor was it the fact that there are more Independent and minor party candidates than ever before, at 233 - the next highest figure was in 1992 when 186 candidates were recorded under 'Other' in the official results.

These two broken records hint at greater volatility than ever before, and at dissatisfaction with the main political parties - whether the voters feel the same way will only become clear when the ballot boxes are opened on Saturday fortnight.

It's not even the fact that, for the first time since 1969, Fine Gael are running more candidates than Fianna Fáil, with 104 compared to 75.

This is a pointer to the expectations each party has about the result, based on recent opinion polls.

The really significant fact, for me, is that for the first time in its existence, Fianna Fáil is not running enough candidates to secure a majority in the Dáil if they were all elected.

The magic number to be sure of forming a Government is 83 - and the only party with enough candidates to even have a prospect of forming a single party government is Fine Gael.

Now, on one level, Fianna Fáil's more modest candidate strategy is just a recognition of reality - with the way the polls have been for the past couple of years, the party is simply accepting the inevitable.

But on another level, it signals that, even without a vote being cast, Irish politics has changed very fundamentally.

For the first time since the party was founded in 1926, Fianna Fáil has formally admitted that it has no prospect of forming a government on its own.

And the dominance of a party which has won more seats than any other in every election since 1932 is, for the moment, at an end.

We knew Election 2011 was likely to be a watershed. Now, two weeks before polling, we have proof.

[I am grateful to James McBride of UCD's Irish Social Science Data Archive for trawling through the candidate lists in every general election since 1922 to confirm that Election 2011 is already a record breaker.]

Summary of Candidates for General Election

The deadline for withdrawals for nominations to the forthcoming General Election passed at 12pm today, 10 February. There are 564 candidates nominated for the election. There are 165 seats on offer in the current election because the outgoing Ceann Comhairle, Seamus Kirk of Fianna Fáil, is returned automatically in Louth. He is not included in the candidate total below

Women Candidates

There are 86 Women Candidates (15.2%). Cork South West, Kildare South, Limerick, and Roscommon-South Leitrim have no women candidates on the ballot paper.

-David McCullagh