Party identification in the wake of the crisis: a nascent realignment?

Many commentators have sounded the death knell for party identification. For example, Dalton claims that we are witnessing a general process of partisan dealignment and that this trend ‘reflects long term and enduring characteristics of advanced industrial societies’ (Dalton 2002, p. 29). Like many other countries, Ireland experienced a sustained period of political dealignment, beginning in the 1970s (or earlier) and continuing right through to the new millennium. In Eurobarometer polls taken in the late 1970s, approximately two thirds of Irish respondents described themselves as being close to a political party; this had declined to 40 per cent by the mid-1990s (Mair and Marsh 2004, 242). As reported below, just over one quarter of respondents admitted to feeling close to a party in Irish National Election Study (INES) surveys conducted in 2002 and 2007, and this fell even further in in 2011