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Counting begins at 9am across the country with the largest parties on course for a tight finish in their share of the vote in general election 2024, according to the results of an exit poll last night.
The results of the poll, conducted by Ipsos/B&A on Friday for The Irish Times/RTÉE/TG4/TCD, and released just after 10pm, are: Sinn Féin 21.1 per cent, Fianna Fáil 19.5 per cent, Fine Gael 21 per cent, the Green Party 4 per cent, Labour 5 per cent, the Social Democrats 5.8 per cent, People Before Profit Solidarity 3.1 per cent, Aontú 3.6 per cent, Independents/others 14.6 per cent and Independent Ireland 2.2 per cent.
Stay with us throughout the day for all the latest from the count centres along with reaction, analysis and opinion from our reporters and writers.
We have an update on the exit poll from our Political Editor Pat Leahy that points to what voters may want to happen next.
Almost half of voters in yesterday’s general election favour a coalition government based on the combination of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, according to the Irish Times/RTE/TG4/TCD exit poll.
Nearly a third of voters (31 per cent) said they would prefer a coalition of just Fine Gael and Fianna Fail; a further 9 per cent preferred a government of those two parties plus independents; while a further 9 per cent said they would like to see a government of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and one or more smaller parties.
Combined, this is a total of 49 per cent of voters in the exit poll who want to see a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail-led government.
The next most popular choice is a government led by Sinn Fein without Fine Gael or Fianna Fail, which was chosen by 22 per cent. Another 7 per cent said they wanted to see a Fianna Fail-Sinn Fein coalition (including just 9 per cent of Fianna Fail voters), while 21 per cent said they wanted to see “something else”.
The most popular choice for Taoiseach is the Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, who was the preferred choice of 35 per cent. He pips the Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, who is on 34 per cent, while the Fine Gael leader Simon Harris is on 27 per cent. Just 5 per cent gave no response.
So, how is the day and the weekend going to pan out?
The ballot boxes will be opened at the count centres around the country at 9am after which the ballot papers will be sifted and sorted.
By 11am some decent tallies will start coming in that should give us an even better sense of where things are going than the exit polls did.
By mid to late afternoon we will have the first seats filled and the counting will continue across the country late into the night.
It will start all over again on Sunday morning and by midnight tomorrow we should be done.
The people have spoken, now we just have to figure out what they said, as the old saying has it.
The exit poll we published last night put the three main parties clustered at around 20 per cent and – based on those figures – it looks like the next Government will be made up of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and others.
But as keen election watchers will well know a lot can change as the votes are counted and the seats get filled.
So, we’ll start – unusually, perhaps – by quoting a Letter to the Editor published this morning from Paul Delaney in Delgany.
“It’s all over bar the counting: the excuses, the recriminations, the finger-pointing, and the inevitable lengthy political horse-trading that takes place prior to the establishment of a coalition government. The people have spoken; but it’s going to take quite a while to figure out what exactly they said. “
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