If there is such a thing as a youth vote in Irish politics, the Social Democrats look well placed to capitalise on it. If that comes to pass, the instalment of Holly Cairns as leader will doubtless be seen as crucial moment.
Gary Gannon, the party’s TD for Dublin Central (and at 36, the youngest TD aside from Cairns) says the party is attractive to a “generation of people who want to be defined not by the political parties their parents voted for” and who were politicised by the austerity period and the referendums on equal marriage and abortion.
The party had a good general election in 2020, picking up six seats, including that of the 33-year-old Cairns in Cork South West. However, this was no youthquake – the Irish Times exit poll showed 4.6 per cent of those aged 25-34 voted SocDems, and 4.1 per cent of 18-24-year olds. While ahead of their national figure, this was behind all of the three big parties, well behind the Greens and only marginally (0.3 points) ahead of Labour among 25-34-year olds.
Following Cairns’s election, there was an immediate bounce – one poll had them on a stratospheric 9 per cent. That has since settled down, with the party coming in at about 5-6 per cent – still an appreciable jump.
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A closer look at the data suggests the party’s vote has shot up among younger and urban voters. In February of this year, its support in Dublin was 4 per cent, against a national figure of 2 per cent. After Cairns was installed that figures surged to 9 per cent – a five-point bump.
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Among 18-24-year olds (for the sake of argument, call them Gen Z), it was 3 per cent – and has doubled to 6 per cent. Among 25-34-year olds (again, for the sake of argument, call them millennials), it was also 3 per cent, but the party enjoyed a massive 10-point bump and sit on 13 per cent. Clearly a cohort of voters is attracted by their ‘change’ message and their lack of baggage, as well as by the new leader. As such, it’s not surprising that party officials point to policies such as increased affordable and cost rental targets, a €1,200 rent credit and a three-year rent freeze, along with further cuts to public transport fares and expansion of youth mental health services.
The party’s strength among younger and urban voters is balanced out by the other side of the ledger: among older demographics it declines and is markedly weaker outside Leinster. Its newfound appeal appears to be a segmented one. “We don’t want to be a party of urban voters,” Gannon says. “We don’t believe rural Ireland is by its nature a conservative place.”
However, the SocDems won’t welcome the defection of activist Evie Nevin (36) to the Labour Party, where she will be a candidate in the local elections. Nevin told The Irish Times she felt she was not going to be selected to run for the council in Skibbereen LEA, in Cairns’s heartland of west Cork, and posted on Instagram that the party was “closed and hierarchical” in the constituency. Nevin, who has campaigned for rights for people with disability and is herself disabled, said she felt “let down” by the Social Democrats. While she said she would support Cairns and be “cheering her on from this side”, she is of the view that the SocDems “doesn’t feel like the party I joined in 2018″ and had not for some time before the leadership change.
What are the parties doing for the under-35s?
