A decline of ‘friends and neighbours voting’ in Ireland? Local candidate effects in the 2011 Irish ‘earthquake election

‘Friends and neighbours voting’, that is, the propensity of voters to support local candidates, is a characteristic of a number of contemporary democracies. The Republic of Ireland is one of the settings where this phenomenon has been explained and documented very comprehensively. In this paper, we study local candidate effects in the most recent Irish general election, held in 2011. We show that during this unusually volatile election, fought in the shadow of an EU/IMF ‘bailout’, ‘friends and neighbours voting’ persisted but was attenuated in comparison to what has been observed in the past. This was most pronounced in the case of the historically dominant party – Fianna Fáil – and (in a weaker form) for its all-time rival – Fine Gael. We describe the changing electoral strength of these two and other Irish parties in terms of fluctuating local candidate effects. •We study ‘friends and neighbours voting’ in the 2011 Irish ‘earthquake’ election.•‘Friends and neighbours voting’ in such a volatile election has so far never been studied.•‘Friends and neighbours voting’ effects persisted in that election but were seriously attenuated.•‘Friends and neighbours voting’ effects thus seem to be contingent on electoral context.