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Hard-left candidate Catherine Connolly has won a resounding victory in Ireland’s presidential election, clinching more than twice the support of her centre-right rival, according to preliminary tallies.
Heather Humphreys, Connolly’s opponent, conceded defeat on Saturday afternoon even before official results were announced.
“Catherine will be a president for all of us and she will be my president and I really would like to wish her all the very, very best,” she said.
Centre-right Fine Gael, which is in coalition with the centrist Fianna Fáil party, projected Connolly would clinch 64 per cent with Humphreys, a former Fine Gael minister on 27 per cent, the Irish Times reported.
The ballot was marked by low turnout and anger at the small number of candidates on offer. As many as 13 per cent of ballot papers were damaged, many by scrawls such as “not my president” or “none of the above”.
Humphreys fared so badly that she even trailed behind the tally of spoilt votes in some pockets of the country.
Connolly, 68, who was backed by the opposition Sinn Féin and other left-wing parties, told reporters in her native Galway in the west of Ireland that she was “absolutely delighted”, hailing the “movement” behind her.
Gary Murphy, a politics professor at Dublin City University, told broadcaster RTÉ: “This is going to be the greatest landslide in presidential history.”
Official results were expected later on Saturday. Fine Gael leader Simon Harris congratulated Connolly on X and said he was “proud” of Humphreys.
With her patient demeanour and serene smile, Connolly, a fluent Irish speaker who grew up in a council house with 13 siblings and lost her mother at the age of nine, was criticised for views some considered extreme.
Connolly, who is staunchly pro-Palestinian and a defender of Ireland’s neutrality, blasted the EU for its military build-up in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying it had lost its “moral compass”. She added that German rearmament spending was reminiscent of the 1930s.
The former barrister and clinical psychologist also branded the US, UK and France untrustworthy over their stance on Gaza.
While left-wing parties celebrated Connolly and their unprecedented joint backing for her, analysts said it was premature to say her victory marked the birth of a united left or that it could be replicated in a general election.
But the humbling of Humphreys’ Fine Gael, which has been in power since 2011, will serve a stark warning to the government.
Many voters appeared to have been particularly turned off by a Fine Gael video that attacked Connolly by questioning her judgment in representing banks as a barrister during the financial crisis at a time when homes were being repossessed.
The party had also focused on her decision to hire a dissident Republican with a gun conviction to work in her parliamentary office.
Fianna Fáil’s candidate, Jim Gavin, withdrew because of a scandal over his failure to repay money to a tenant 16 years ago. But his name remained on the ballot and early tallies showed he had still secured 6 to 9 per cent of the vote in some areas.
Connolly, a mother of two who served as deputy speaker of Ireland’s lower house of parliament, the Dáil, reeled in young voters with podcasts and a savvy social media campaign displaying football skills, rollerblading and her budding piano playing.
She will be inaugurated as Ireland’s 10th president on November 11.
