Bill Browne
Director Accountability & Democracy Program

Leaving Australia behind for a moment, independent candidate Catherine Connolly won Friday’s Irish presidential election after beingnominated by a progressive coalition including Sinn Féin, Labour, Social Democrats, and several other parties and independents.

The position of President of Ireland is largely ceremonial but, like Australia’s Governor-General, the President does wield some reserve powers. The election used preferential voting, like Australian elections, which means you cannot “waste” your vote by putting a less popular candidate first.

Last year, the Australia Institute looked at how likely independent candidates are to win elections.

Ireland and Australia are exceptions to the rule that independents are vanishingly rare in Western democracies. There are 16 independents in Ireland’s lower house, even more than Australia’s 10 in the House of Representatives (depending on how you count these things, you could add a couple more).   

But Irish independents benefit from their proportional representation style of electing local members. Australia is far ahead of other countries with just one local MP per electorate.

(Correct at time of publication in 2024 – numbers may have changed since then.)