Ireland 1951 general election

Final results from ParlGov, read 5 October 2026: Fianna Fáil won 69 of 147 seats with 46.3% of the vote; 75.3% of registered voters cast a ballot, up 1.0 points on 1948.

Ireland
Held Wednesday 30 May 1951

Result

74 for a majority

Seats and votes by party

Party	Seats	± seats	%	± points	Votes
Fianna Fáil	69	+1	46.3	+4.4	616,212
Fine Gael	40	+9	25.8	+5.9	342,922
Labour Party	16	+2	11.4	+2.7	151,828
Clann na Poblachta	2	−8	4.1	−9.1	54,210
Clann na Talmhan	6	−1	2.9	−2.7	38,872
Largest party without seats	0	0	0.0	0.0	295
Independents	14	+2

± is the change against the Ireland 1948 general election, party by party.

Votes by party

Fianna Fáil 616,212
Fine Gael 342,922
Labour Party 151,828
Clann na Poblachta 54,210
Clann na Talmhan 38,872
Largest party without seats 295
Independents

ParlGov lists parties with at least 1 percent of the vote or 2 seats, so the rows do not add up to the valid votes. How we read it.

Share of the vote

Turnout

75.3% of the 1,785,144 registered voters cast a ballot (1,343,616 ballots), up 1.0 points on 1948. 1,331,573 of them were valid votes. How turnout is counted.

Votes and seats

Fianna Fáil46.3% of votes46.9% of seats
Fine Gael25.8% of votes27.2% of seats
Labour Party11.4% of votes10.9% of seats
Clann na Talmhan2.9% of votes4.1% of seats
Clann na Poblachta4.1% of votes1.4% of seats

Each party's share of the vote (outlined) and of the seats (filled)

The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 7.1 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 3.4 by votes and 3.2 by seats; Fianna Fáil led Fine Gael by 20.5 points of the vote. How these are computed.

Sources and licence

ParlGov 2024 Release (Döring and Manow), Harvard Dataverse (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal
Wikidata, party colours (P465) (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal

Our text and compilation: CC BY 4.0. How to reuse and cite this page.