Election losses projected for Irish ruling coalition

DUBLIN

Exit polls from the Irish general election gave no party an overall majority Saturday and suggested the outgoing governing coalition would not be re-elected.

A poll for national broadcaster RTE predicted both Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael party and his Labour coalition partners would both lose seats in the Irish parliament, or Dail.

According to the poll conducted at the end of Friday’s vote, supporters of the coalition parties switched to independent candidates rather than established opposition parties.

The exit poll put the liberal Fine Gael on 24.8 percent of first preference votes while the center-right Fianna Fail received 21.1 percent. The nationalist Sinn Fein received 16 percent and the Labour Party was predicted to get 7.1 percent.

Nearly 30 percent said they had voted for independent candidates or smaller parties, more than double figure in 2011’s election.

A separate exit poll for the Irish Times newspaper contained broadly similar projections with both showing the Fine Gael-Labour coalition would fall far short of a parliamentary majority.

Vote counting began at 0900GMT on Saturday and was expected to continue for most of the weekend.