Faced with the choice between the devil they knew intimately and the devil they hadn't known for a long time, a majority of those citizens of Southern Ireland who had a vote rejected the biggest bribe ever offered to an electorate, and chose the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition. Fianna Fail's first preference vote was up from 45.6% to 46.3%. Fine Gael's first preference vote was also up by 1% from 34% to 35.1%. Labour slumped from 17% to 13.7%. Sinn Fein (Official and Kevin Boland's Aontacht Eireann both did disappointingly badly, getting 1.1% and 0.9% respectively.
The distribution of seats was as follows: Fianna Fail 69, Fine Gael 54, Labour 19, Independents But these results only scrape the surface. KEY TO UNDERSTANDING The key to understanding the results can most casily be found by examining exactly why Lynch went for the election, why the electorate, when broken down by classes, voted the way it did, and the problems facing the incoming Coalition.
Lynch went for the election in an attempt to get a mandate before the White Paper, because he knows that the White Paper will offer little of significance to the Northern minority. He intended to suppress any element, ie. Republicans, likely to protest against this: but his majority in the old Dail would not allow him to do this.
If the other parties, Fine Gael and Labour, combined in voting against him, he had to depend on the votes of the expelled Blaneyites*. Inside the Party, he was aware that the Haugheyites*, numbering up to 16 Deputies, were waiting for an opportunity to safely carve him up. A crucial part of his election strategy, therefore, was not just to get Fianna Fail back with a majority, but was to change the compoOF