Ireland 1981 general election
Final results from ParlGov, read : Fianna Fáil won 78 of 166 seats with 45.3% of the vote; 76.2% of registered voters cast a ballot, down 0.1 points on 1977.
- Ireland
- Held
Result
- Fianna Fáil78
- Fine Gael65
- Labour Party15
- Independents4
- Anti H-Block2
- Unnamed party with one seat1
- Workers' Party1
Seats and votes by party
| Party | Seats | ± seats | % | ± points | Votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fianna Fáil | 78 | −6 | 45.3 | −5.4 | 777,616 |
| Fine Gael | 65 | +22 | 36.5 | +6.0 | 626,376 |
| Labour Party | 15 | −2 | 9.9 | −1.7 | 169,990 |
| Anti H-Block | 2 | 2.4 | 42,803 | ||
| Workers' Party | 1 | +1 | 1.7 | 0.0 | 29,561 |
| Unnamed party with one seat | 1 | 0.4 | 7,107 | ||
| Largest party without seats | 0 | 0.0 | 571 | ||
| Independents | 4 | 0 |
± is the change against the Ireland 1977 general election, party by party.
Votes by party
- Fianna Fáil 777,616
- Fine Gael 626,376
- Labour Party 169,990
- Anti H-Block 42,803
- Workers' Party 29,561
- Unnamed party with one seat 7,107
- Largest party without seats 571
- 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
76.2% of the 2,275,450 registered voters cast a ballot (1,734,379 ballots), down 0.1 points on 1977. 1,718,211 of them were valid votes. The lowest turnout since 1965 in our data. How turnout is counted.
Votes and seats
- Fianna Fáil45.3% of votes47.0% of seats
- Fine Gael36.5% of votes39.2% of seats
- Labour Party9.9% of votes9.0% of seats
- Anti H-Block2.4% of votes1.2% of seats
- Workers' Party1.7% of votes0.6% of seats
The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 3.1 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 2.9 by votes and 2.6 by seats; Fianna Fáil led Fine Gael by 8.8 points of the vote. How these are computed.
Sources and licence
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.