Feb 9,2020: Ireland’s three main parties are tied neck-and-neck following Saturday’s general election according to an exit poll, leaving the question of who will control the next government hanging in the balance.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s incumbent Fine Gael party, their centre-right rivals Fianna Fail and left-wingers Sinn Fein all received 22 percent of first preference votes, according to the Ipsos MRBI poll issued as the polls closed at 2200 GMT.
The survey of around 5,000 voters leaving the polls — which has an estimated margin of error of 1.3 percent — put Fine Gael on 22.4 percent, Sinn Fein on 22.3 percent and Fianna Fail on 22.2 percent.
However, Ireland uses a single transferable vote system to elect multiple deputies from each of the 39 constituencies, making it hard to extrapolate a likely seat forecast from the exit poll figures for first preference votes.
That means the outline of the next parliament will only start to become clear during the count, which gets under way at 0900 GMT on Sunday.
