{"id":145294,"date":"2025-10-25T22:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/145294\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T22:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:43:07","slug":"lack-of-candidate-choices-regrettable-says-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/145294\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of candidate choices \u201cregrettable\u201d, says Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has said it is \u201cregrettable\u201d that there were not more than two candidates in the 2025 Presidential election.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The race was a two-horse race between Fine Gael\u2019s Heather Humphreys, Leftwing Independent Catherine Connolly, and Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s Jim Gavin, who dropped out of the campaign prior to election day but remained on the ballot as a technicality.<\/p>\n

The election, which saw an unprecedented 12.9% spoilt ballots (213,738 spoilt votes in total), saw a significant protest element, with an active \u201cspoil the vote\u201d campaign circulating on social media in the days and weeks preceding the election to object to the narrow choices on offer.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters at Dublin Castle after conceding defeat to the victorious Catherine Connolly, Harris said that the number of spoiled votes was a protest message to the whole political system.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure those people who spoiled their ballot just sent a message to the government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey certainly did that, but I think they sent their message to all political parties because of course they could have voted for the opposition and they chose not to do that as well.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026My sense from reading some of their comments was that they wanted to send a message to the political system, to political parties, that they didn\u2019t feel represented on the ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201cregrettable\u201d that the choices were so narrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think it is regrettable that there were only two active candidates on the ballot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not how I saw the election going genuinely. I remember talking to lots of people about this. I\u2019m sure I made public comments about this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you would have asked me during the summer, I thought there would have been a Sinn F\u00e9in candidate, Catherine Connolly, a Fianna F\u00e1il candidate, a Fine Gael candidate, and probably one other candidate, because the numbers were there to either get through the councils regardless of Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s position or to get through the Oireachtas. So I think there\u2019s a bit of reflection on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also noted the \u201ceffort\u201d people went to in order to spoil their ballots.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m more interested in is the fact that people went to a lot of effort yesterday to go out and spoil their vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t say that as a smart comment. I mean that seriously. People actually decided to get in their car, get on their bicycle, walk to their polling station. They didn\u2019t just sit at home. The people who spoiled their vote. We need to reflect on that too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, Fine Gael ordered its councillors to not nominate any other candidates to the \u00c1ras \u2013 a move which Harris defended \u2013 while Fianna F\u00e1il leader Miche\u00e1l Martin told his party\u2019s Oireachtas members that the consequences for nominating any outside candidates would be \u201csevere\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has said it is \u201cregrettable\u201d that there were not more than two candidates in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[4391,9,10,1921,18,13,14,553,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,59,44,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-145294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ben-scallan","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-catherine-connolly","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-fine-gael","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-presidential-election","25":"tag-simon-harris","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115437227415056516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}