Where now for the left after the local Elections?

So the lights in most of the count centres have now been switched off - Euro counts aside - and political activists and scientists across the country will be now trying to digest the outcome of peoples decisions in the ballot box on May 24th.
Overall the main news story of the elections was the success of the Green Party and the losses suffered by Sinn Fein.

But this to my mind was a clear example of media 'framing'.
The whole media news cycle was dominated by the elections wins for the Greens with acres of coverage given to stories around environmental issues saying these will dominate the next election and form a key part of the discussions in forming a government.
Yet I'm sure quite a few of ye reading this would be surprised to learn that 94.5% of the electorate did NOT vote for them, with the party led by Eamonn Ryan securing 5.5% of the total votes cast last Friday.

Don't get me wrong, it was still an impressive result as any party more than doubling their share of the vote compared to the last Local Elections in 2014 does deserve some attention.
When the Anti-Austerity Alliance (now Solidarity) and People Before Profit between them went from about 5 seats to over 20 five years ago this did not receive a morsel of the coverage that the Green party is receiving now.
But an important caveat to that 2014 election when those two parties alongside Sinn Fein made big gains was that there was an angry mood sweeping the country, with services and wages cut as a result of the I.M.F. Bailout.

While the two largest parties were once again Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (a fact quite a few people angrily ranted online about), some have lost sight of the huge significance of their combined vote.
In 1979 - the year I was born - These two parties got just under 3/4 of the vote gaining a share of just over 74% between them (They got a combined 81.1% two years later in the General Election!). now their share has gone down to 52.2% overall, a whopping drop of
Also in 1979 the result across Dublin saw FF and FG claim 2/3 of the entire council seats on offer, they are on a much reduced figure after last Friday's vote.
The best comparable seat data I can find is for the 1981 General election where FF and Fg won a total of 143 seats between them.
At the last General Election in 2016 their combined total was 94 seats, a drop of 49 seats,

Also back in 1979 the vast majority of the electorate was wedded to a party in the main and not the person - hence in many places you could have ran a dog for Fine Gael and a cat for Fianna Fail and both would be elected.
Today things are a lot different, with people more and more voting not alog straight party lines but by geography.

I was at the Fingal, Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown and South Dublin County Council tallying and full counts in both the RDS over the weekend, and quite a few times I heard people remark at how crazy the transfers were going and that the patterns were way off kilter from where they used to be.
For example - Sinn Fein's Paul Donnelly topped the poll in the Ongar Ward in Blanchardstown on Fingal County Council with 21% of the vote.
A lot of his no2's were going to Kieran Dennison of Fine Gael, something that simply would have been unheard of even ten years ago.
Why were we noticing this seismic change n transfer demographic?   Simply put - the FG candidate lived near the SF candidate, and lots of people voted 'local' down their ballot paper.

Yes Green issues are now higher upon the issues list than they were and yes there is a noticeable change in peoples voting habits; but for the left wing parties such as Solidarity-People Before Profit and the Workers Party etc (as for Sinn Fein I don't see them as a true 'left' party myself, but many others would characterise them as being so), the biggest issue that faces them, and played a significant part in their losing so many seats was turnout.

This is the very big elephant in the room facing these parties and it was THE key reason Solidarity-People Before Profit saw a 1.1% drop in their combined support in 2014, where they went from 3% of the vote share in 2014 to 1.9% this time.
It was also a sizable reason why Sinn Fein went down from 15.3% to 9.5% this time which was a drop of around 1/3 in 5 years.
When the left got their significant seat gains in 2014 I immediately sounded a note of caution - In a lot of working class areas the turnout was just 39-41%, and I remarked back then that if the left-wing parties could not get this 60% of the electorate out to vote in the future they would suffer - and they have.

I had predicted months ago that the turnout would be in the lower-mid 30's, and in most areas it appears it was;  Some staunch working class wards sadly saw LESS than 30% come out to vote.

Another noticeable thing that showed even more just how many people have become disconnected from the political process was the fact that so many local election candidates had to campaign with very few helpers, as they found it near impossible to get people to come out and knock on doors or drop leaflets.
I believe THIS was the reason why we had so many people complaining on Twitter and Facebook that no political party had yet knocked on their door; and not because they were scared to do so, as some of the complainants had alleged.
Had the left candidates that narrowly lost their seats had more helpers who were thus able to engage constructively with more constituents on their doorsteps, I believe some if not all may have kept their seats.
(There were also some candidates who were essentially 'paper candidates' in 2014 who against the odds got elected by the tide of anger, who to be honest did very little on the ground for the people they represented, and thus it was no real surprise to see them lose their seat) 

This chronically low turnout meant that the number of voters who placed 'Green' issues at the top of their list of concerns increased in percentage terms and also - for example - saw a Fine Gael Councillor elected in Tallaght South, a place were they crashed and burned in 2014;  With a number of areas recording a turnout of less than 15%, it increased the percentage of the core Fine Gael vote in that area and Baby Perrapadam was duly elected to South Dublin County Council.

Also in parts of the Ongar Ward in Blanchardstown the turnout was as low as 22 and 23% respectively while other less working-class parts saw a much higher turnout and a hard-left councillor, Matt Waine of Solidarity narrowly missed out on keeping his council seat.

These were areas that saw high turnouts in the Marriage Equality and Abortion Referendums, yet the populous was not motivated to get out and cast their ballot this time.
I canvassed for Tania Doyle in the Ongar Ward in Blanchardstown and it was strongly apparent that the mood was flatter than a pancake.
My hope that the Divorce referendum might have brought the total back up nearer the 2014 turnout proved to be misguided.

A friend of mine living in Dublin 12 made a very good point to me before the election remarking "The left only do well when there is anger, when things are going well their vote falls", I would also add that unless said left parties have a good set of policy proposals, in times like the one we are in now these parties will suffer.

At the next general election if it comes to pass again that in constituencies with a mixture of working class and middle-class areas, that the % of people voting in the working class areas ends up being near half that of middle class parts (as happened in areas during this local election) the sitting left TD's in Dail Eireann could find themselves in big trouble as people headed to the polls.
There is bound to be an increase in support for the Green Party and my gut feeling is that it will be more keenly noticed in the middle-class areas (It was constituencies with sizable areas of that demographic that returned  5 of the 6 Green Party TD's to Dail Eireann in 2007).

 So in places such as Dublin West and Dublin North the Left TD's will likely find Green candidates closely snapping at their heels as it stands.

So again I re-iterate the point even more forcefully that unless the left parties can get the working class vote out in sizable numbers in their area they will be in further trouble into the future.
It is going to be a considerable task for sure and I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but unless they can find that magic formula that makes those extra badly needed votes come flooding in, we could have an even more right-wing Dail next time out.