Ireland 1987 general election

Final results from ParlGov, read 5 October 2026: Fianna Fáil won 81 of 166 seats with 44.1% of the vote; 73.3% of registered voters cast a ballot, up 0.5 points on 1982.

Ireland
Held Tuesday 17 February 1987

Result

84 for a majority

Seats and votes by party

Party	Seats	± seats	%	± points	Votes
Fianna Fáil	81	+6	44.1	−1.1	784,547
Fine Gael	51	−19	27.1	−12.2	481,127
Progressive Democrats	14		11.8		210,583
Labour Party	12	−4	6.5	−2.9	114,551
Workers' Party	4	+2	3.8	+0.5	67,273
Sinn Féin	0		1.9		32,933
Democratic Socialist Party	1		0.4		7,424
Independents	3	0

± is the change against the Ireland November 1982 general election, party by party.

Votes by party

Fianna Fáil 784,547
Fine Gael 481,127
Progressive Democrats 210,583
Labour Party 114,551
Workers' Party 67,273
Sinn Féin 32,933
Democratic Socialist Party 7,424
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

73.3% of the 2,445,515 registered voters cast a ballot (1,793,406 ballots), up 0.5 points on 1982. 1,777,165 of them were valid votes. How turnout is counted.

Votes and seats

Fianna Fáil44.1% of votes48.8% of seats
Fine Gael27.1% of votes30.7% of seats
Progressive Democrats11.8% of votes8.4% of seats
Labour Party6.5% of votes7.2% of seats
Workers' Party3.8% of votes2.4% of seats
Democratic Socialist Party0.4% of votes0.6% of seats

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

The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 5.3 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 3.5 by votes and 2.9 by seats; Fianna Fáil led Fine Gael by 17.1 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.