Abstract

This project contributes to the literature on the electoral discrimination thesis, whereby some voters penalise candidates from ethnic minorities. An under-studied aspect of it is the role of issue salience in determining its extent. To address this gap, transfer rates from far-right voters to ethnic minority candidates in the 2024 Irish local elections are studied. Specifically, this project explores the extent of far right electoral discrimination when immigration is of high salience, controlling for other key variables. The argument that high salience makes electoral discrimination more likely is backed up by the finding of a significant and negative effect on far-right transfer rates to ethnic minority candidates when immigration is prominent in a local area. This study touches on multiple under- researched areas, including voting behaviour in preferential systems, and has implications for the study of Irish politics and far-right voting behaviour.

Introduction

An increasing number of Irish people are from ethnic minority or immigrant backgrounds, and while their political participation is growing, these groups still tend to be underrepresented in elected roles (Szlovak, 2018). Many factors contribute to this, including electoral discrimination by voters against ethnic minority candidates (EMCs) (Portmann, 2022). As an emerging area for research, many aspects remain underexplored, particularly the conditions that determine its scope. Another growing constituency in Ireland is far-right voters, whose voting behaviour warrants further investigation. This raises the following question: Is electoral discrimination against ethnic minority candidates by Irish far-right voters more likely when immigration salience is higher?

In the context of the Irish preference-based electoral system, this question presents the opportunity to learn more about far-right voting behaviour, a critical concept, and to better understand one of the barriers to political representation that ethnic minorities face. This could enable researchers and policymakers alike to combat this barrier, developing more descriptively representative democratic structures. This question offers clear empirical importance: because far-right parties tend not to run EMCs, far- right electoral discrimination has been near-impossible to study — Ireland’s system allows this issue to be overcome (Besco, 2020). The impact of issue salience on individual candidates can also be better understood, with existing research mostly focusing instead on party choice (Dennison, 2019). Indeed, literature linking issue salience with electoral discrimination is currently almost non-existent. Theoretically, this question is intriguing: while this study argues that discrimination is more likely when immigration salience is higher, it is also possible that increased salience merely leads to a higher overall far-right vote without a change in discrimination frequency, or indeed that a broader far- right base beyond core nationalists is more ideologically diverse, resulting in less discrimination against EMCs (Vasilopoulou & Halikiopoulou, 2024).

(Irish) Electoral Discrimination

A relatively recent conceptualisation, electoral discrimination research is a growing field. Nevertheless, electoral discrimination has been observed across countries and time periods (Besco, 2020; Ceva & Stojanović, 2025; Martin & Blinder, 2021). It refers to EMCs receiving fewer votes than equivalent majority-group candidates (Besco, 2020). EMCs are those from groups who differ in race or nationality, religious or cultural origin from the dominant group, which in this case is white Irish, who contest elections (Abba-Aji et al., 2022). An emerging pattern in the literature is that right-wing voters discriminate more than left- wingers; it seems near-certain that far-right voters would also discriminate (Auer et al., 2025; Martin & Blinder, 2021; Street, 2014). While Irish ethnicity-based electoral discrimination has not been studied, it is likely to exist in a political culture where individual candidates are as or more important than their party, and where electoral structures are also candidate centric (Cunningham & Marsh, 2024; Weeks, 2017a). Far-right rhetoric also targets EMCs specifically, framing them as part of the replacement of native populations (Arlow & O’Malley, 2025). Therefore, this question seeks to move beyond whether electoral discrimination exists and instead examine why it occurs. This has not been examined with a specific focus on issue salience – one dimension that has been studied is whether electoral discrimination is a function of in-group positive bias or outgroup negative bias (Portmann, 2022).

Issue Salience and (Far-right) Voting Behaviour

Issue salience in this context is understood as behavioural, referring to the weight someone gives to an issue when voting (Dennison, 2019). The explanatory power of issue salience on voting behaviour is long-established (Gunderson, 2024; RePass, 1971; Sipma & Berning, 2021). However, this has been mainly limited to party choice, rather than candidate-level choices (Dennison, 2019). Relatedly, little research exists on this relationship in preferential systems like Ireland’s, with Singh’s (2009) study in Australia being a rare example. Finally, there is some indirect research on the effect of immigration salience, or issue salience generally, on the extent of electoral discrimination – one such example is experimental research finding that some EMCs in Britain, where immigration salience is high, could reduce discrimination by taking anti-immigration stances (Martin & Blinder, 2021). It therefore seems likely that high immigration salience would be associated with more electoral discrimination.

The far-right, a growing group in Ireland and internationally, is defined by two features: nativism and authoritarianism, with populism usually present too (Mudde, 2017). For far-right voting behaviour specifically, high immigration salience contributes to increased far-right vote share rather than a general increase in anti-immigration views (Dennison & Geddes, 2018). Far-right electorates are heterogeneous; it is not always the case that these voters are solely motivated by immigration (Harteveld et al., 2022). Even among those motivated by immigration, there is diversity, with different economic/cultural factors involved (Halikiopoulou & Vlandas, 2020). Typically, the peripheral voters who join a far-right party when it grows are more likely to be motivated by economic factors in their opposition to immigration (Vasilopoulou & Halikiopoulou, 2024).

Expectations

Electoral discrimination is expected to be higher where immigration is more salient: because of increased salience, they are likely to have more people who are motivated by core nativist views, even as a share of the overall far-right vote. Increased immigration salience is also likely to cause more immigration- motivated far-right voting, which would increase this share of the overall cohort at the expense of those who vote far-right based on other factors. Subsequently, immigration-motivated voters ought to be more discriminatory against EMCs, giving rise to a higher rate of electoral discrimination. If these expectations align with true voting patterns, far-right vote share should have little impact on electoral discrimination, with salience of immigration instead being a stronger predictor. The candidate-centric nature of Irish political culture is also expected to come into play when immigration salience is higher, with the simultaneous presence of these two variables combining to make electoral discrimination more likely.

Additionally, the reality of the Irish far-right must be considered: their vote share is very small, winning just 1.58% in the 2024 general election while not being particularly concentrated in any one area, meaning that it is unlikely that far-right parties have succeeded in expanding beyond a core nativist base anywhere in the country (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2025).

Alternatively, based on the literature above it is possible that in areas with high immigration salience the far-right vote share is higher and thus broader and more diverse, leading to less electoral discrimination as more hardline nativists are drowned out by economics-motivated voters who may be more ambivalent towards individual EMCs; if this is the case, higher immigration salience should, via the variable of increased far-right vote, correlate with less electoral discrimination.

Research Design

The Irish electoral system is ideal for testing electoral discrimination, thanks to its preferential nature (Portmann & Stojanović, 2019). In this system, voters rank the candidates by preference, and the candidate with the lowest first preferences is eliminated, with their votes transferred to the second preferences. Electoral discrimination in this context is operationalised as the transfer rate from a far-right candidate (FRC) to an EMC. Local elections are more suited to studying electoral discrimination as candidates are less well-known, meaning voters necessarily place more importance on personal traits such as ethnicity (Matson & Fine, 2006). This makes the 2024 Irish local elections the most suitable for this question. Only one election should be studied to minimise independent variables. All vote data is available from official government sources, from which the transfer rate of each observation was calculated (Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, 2025). Four far-right parties participated: National Party, Irish Freedom Party, Ireland First and The Irish People (Ahmed, 2025). Aontú and Independent Ireland are not included, categorised merely as right-wing (McElroy and Müller, 2025; Ó Rálaigh, 2025). Some far-right independents ran, but as independent voters in Ireland are distinctive and difficult to compare to party voters, these candidates have been excluded, giving 108 FRCs (Weeks, 2017b). EMCs were identified by their name and/or appearance, which both appear on ballot papers: while this strategy inevitably excludes some who identify as members of minority groups, e.g. Irish Travellers, and includes some who do not, e.g. someone who took their spouse’s surname, the relevant factor is whether voters perceive them as EMCs rather than their actual identity (see Portmann & Stojanović (2019) for similar strategy). This gives 118 EMCs in 69 local electoral areas (LEAs). There were 52 observations in 27 LEAs of an EMC being in a position to receive transfers from an FRC, with 40 individual EMCs and 37 FRCs. Unfortunately, this sample size did not make it possible to compare degrees of discrimination faced by members of different groups, such as Black or Muslim candidates.

Independent Variable

The salience of immigration has not been directly measured on a local level; instead, it was operationalised by whether an anti- immigration protest had taken place in the LEA after the 2023 Dublin riots, when immigration became more salient nationally, and before polling day, which was the case for 32 observations (Arlow & O’Malley, 2025). It should be noted that anti-immigration protests are treated here as both an indicator of, and a response to, local-level immigration salience, rather than the reverse. Whether an anti-immigration protest occurred in a given LEA was determined through date-ranged internet searches, checking local and national media. However, not every protest in a LEA was automatically indicative of immigration being salient locally. For example, in May 2024, then-Taoiseach Simon Harris was subject to anti-immigration protests outside his home in Greystones, but given that this was an indicator of national-level immigration salience, the Greystones LEA was not coded as having had a protest (O’Connor, 2024).

Controls

Three other independent variables were controlled for: incumbency and party affiliation of the candidate, and far-right vote share in the LEA. Incumbency is straightforward to ascertain and has an observed positive effect in Irish local elections; there were only five incumbent EMCs in the dataset (out of nine overall), limiting the utility of incumbency as a controllable variable for this question (Jankowski & Müller, 2021). Due to the smaller sample size, with most parties only having a handful of candidates in the dataset, using far-right transfer rates to each party would have been too unreliable; instead, a binary variable was used. Rather than left-right, the stronger delineation was between candidates from parties that were or have previously been involved in government coalitions (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and Green), and from those that have not (Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, People Before Profit, Aontú, Right2Change and independents), with the former group receiving muchfewer transfers from far-right voters than the latter. This pattern is not surprising theoretically, given the strong anti-government and populist rhetoric that exists in Irish far-right circles (Karlsson & Ördén, 2025). Inclusion of the 11 observable independent EMCs was possible as an investigation of their campaigns found no issues of potentially confounding variables, e.g. supporting anti-immigration policies. Finally, to control for the potential impact of a higher far-right vote in an area on the theoretical ideological make-up of voters, the total far-right vote share in the LEA was added to the model (Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, 2025).

With these four independent variables included and the transfer rate of FRCs to EMCs as the dependent variable, a standard linear regression was conducted, with the results presented below. A variance inflation factor (VIF) test to assess potential multicollinearity between protest presence, EMC incumbency and far-right vote share was also conducted. It is, of course, impossible to control for every variable, especially with such a small sample, but this model takes into account key individual factors like (non-)party affiliation and incumbency, as well as the theoretical ideological make-up of the far-right voters themselves. The final model is written below:

Transfer rate of FRC to EMC = protest + EMC party + EMC incumbency + LEA far-right vote%

Findings

Table 1: Predictors of far-right transfer rates to EMCs

Independent Variable	Model 1: No Control	Model 2: Party affiliation controlled	Model 3: Incumbency controlled	Model 4: LEA far- right vote share controlled
Protest happened	-2.1891** (0.7911)	-1.8925* (0.7613)	-2.0062* (0.7744)	-2.07016* (0.83294) [1.196164]
EMC stood for party of government	–	-1.8981* (0.7549)	-1.7905* (0.7668)	-1.75684* (0.78905) [1.091875]
EMC was incumbent councillor	–	–	-1.1078 (1.2742)	-1.10410 (1.28713) [1.048818]
Far-right vote share in LEA	–	–		0.05108 (0.22894) [1.160357]
Observations	52	52	52	52

The dependent variable is the transfer rate from FRC to EMC. Linear regression coefficients, standard errors in parentheses, VIFs in square parentheses in Model 4. ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.

Results

The results of this model indicate that increased local salience of immigration, operationalised as whether a protest occurred, does predict electoral discrimination towards EMCs by far-right voters, in the form of less transfers from the FRC in areas where protests happened. The first model, with no controlling variables, finds a negative and strongly significant effect on transfer rates. When controlling for the EMCs’ party affiliation and incumbency, this negative effect was still significant, admittedly to a slightly lesser extent. As anticipated, EMCs who stood for traditional parties of government received less transfers: this is not necessarily electoral discrimination but rather reflects anti- government and populist attitudes of far-right voters. Given the low number of incumbent EMC councillors included in the model, it was impossible to establish a significant effect of incumbency on transfer rate; with more than double the number of immigrant-origin candidates elected in 2024 than in 2019, the 2029 elections may provide a better opportunity in this regard (Immigrant Council of Ireland, 2024).

The final model incorporates far-right vote share in the LEA as an independent variable, as a way to isolate immigration salience from the potential knock-on effects of a broader and more diverse far-right vote. Despite the theoretical possibility that multicollinearity would be present here, with previous protests in a LEA and an incumbent EMC both potentially corresponding to a higher far-right vote share, all variables had VIFs less than 1.2, indicating insignificant issues of multicollinearity. Due to the low coefficient and sizable standard error of the vote share variable here, it is impossible to know the extent to which or even the direction of which far-right vote share is a factor in levels of electoral discrimination, if it even is one. On the other hand, in this model, a protest happening still had a negative and significant effect on transfer rates, albeit with very slightly less confidence than the previous model.

Overall, these models give credence to the expectation that higher issue salience of immigration makes electoral discrimination against EMCs more likely. The first model, with no controls, aligns with the argument that higher immigration salience does increase electoral discrimination against EMCs. When modelling with party affiliation and incumbency controlled for, this argument is still borne out by the evidence: even when their party affiliation is accounted for, EMCs in LEAs where immigration salience is higher suffered more electoral discrimination than those in other LEAs. In the final model, with the far-right vote share considered, and all of the implications on the ideological make-up of the far-right voter cohort this may theoretically bring about, higher issue salience of immigration was still significantly and negatively correlated with lower transfer rates from far-right voters, i.e. higher electoral discrimination.

While there is a theoretical mechanism for higher salience making electoral discrimination less likely, it does not materialise in the analysis. This is because the intermediate variable of this mechanism, far right vote share, was not found to be a predictor of levels of electoral discrimination in a given area. We can therefore rule out the alternative expectation that higher immigration salience would lead to less electoral discrimination, as the indicator it relied on as a key link of the theoretical chain has been broken – in the Irish context at least. Of course, the particularities of this context mean that this is not necessarily a universalisable conclusion: in jurisdictions with less candidate- centrism and/or a more established far-right presence with a broader and more diverse voter base, this expectation could be supported by evidence. Additionally, the inability to properly control for incumbency is an issue that casts some slight doubt on the overall validity of these results.

Nevertheless, these results have implications for the study of Irish politics. They indicate, for the first time, the existence of electoral discrimination against EMCs in Irish politics, an established barrier to ethnic minority representation in elected positions across Western democracies (Street, 2014). More than that, they also attempt to partially explain why electoral discrimination occurs by examining the role of issue salience, finding a clear predictive ability of immigration salience for levels of electoral discrimination. This suggests that the candidate-level choices of voters (or far-right voters at least), in this case, ethnicity-based electoral discrimination, are to some extent influenced by the salience of various issues, in this case, immigration.

These results also demonstrate the potential behavioural impact of issue salience on voters in preferential systems. It is likely, based on this analysis, that issue salience impacts Irish voters not just when deciding their most-preferred candidate, but also as they move down the ballot to their second, third and subsequent choices. Therefore, with voters having such a massive number of choices on their ballot paper in Irish elections, simply analysing first preferences alone does not come close to telling the whole story. Most previous research on issue salience and voting behaviour is subsequently insufficiently applicable to the Irish context, and that of other jurisdictions with preferential systems. While lower preferences of Irish voters may not seem like an area worth studying, they are by no means an inconsequential aspect of Irish voting behaviour, regularly proving decisive in the actual results of elections: 14% of successful candidates in the 2020 general election were only elected because of transfers, having overtaken another candidate who received more first preference votes (Gallagher, 2021). Additionally, many seats, once first preferences and transfers have all been totalled, are decided by a very low number of votes, particularly in local elections where very few LEAs require more than 2,000 total votes to win a seat (Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, 2025). This means that these results, examining differential transfer rates to EMCs, are of strong empirical importance and are highly relevant to the study of Irish politics.

Conclusion

This research question interrogates the relationship between increased salience of immigration and levels of electoral discrimination towards EMCs by far-right voters in Ireland, asking whether the presence of the former makes the latter more likely. Using real-life individual-level voting data from the 2024 local elections to study this discrimination, as opposed to aggregate data, surveys or experiments, this project finds that even when controlling for key variables such as the EMC’s party affiliation and far-right vote share, higher immigration salience does predict increased levels of electoral discrimination in the form of lower transfer rates from far-right voters to EMCs. These findings align with the theoretical expectations of the project, that increased salience of immigration would align with more electoral discrimination towards EMCs due to the subsequent motivations of far-right voters and the candidate-centrism of Irish politics, and are incompatible with competing expectations of no increased discrimination under these circumstances.

This research provides evidence that EMCs suffer electorally when immigration is a more salient issue for voters, although the research design has some limitations, principally due to the small sample size. There are a number of implications from this research that could be tested in the future. Generally speaking, issue salience and electoral discrimination is an under-studied relationship: more research is needed to clarify the extent and mechanisms of a potential causal relationship. Avenues for further research could include replicating this question in other jurisdictions with preferential systems where both EMCs are more common and far-right parties have more support, to attempt to verify the findings with a larger sample size. In the field of Irish politics, where ethnic-based electoral discrimination is understudied, further research could attempt to clarify the extent of electoral discrimination by voters from other right-wing and centre-right parties, which are more common than the far- right. Particularly in the cases of Aontú and Independent Ireland, with their generally anti-immigration programmes, the question discussed above could certainly be asked of their voters, and an analysis of the effects of immigration salience on discrimination from these parties compared to the far-right would make for interesting and important research.

References

Abba-Aji, M., Stuckler, D., Galea, S. and McKee, M. (2022). Ethnic/racial minorities’ and migrants’ access to COVID-19 vaccines: A systematic review of barriers and facilitators. Journal of Migration and Health, 5, 100086.

Abba-Aji, M., Stuckler, D., Galea, S. and McKee, M. (2022). Ethnic/racial minorities’ and migrants’ access to COVID-19 vaccines: A systematic review of barriers and facilitators. Journal of Migration and Health, 5, 100086.

Arlow, J. and O’Malley, E. (2025). Immigration and the ‘Far Right’ in the Election. In: M. Gallagher, E. O’Malley and T. Reidy, eds., How Ireland Voted 2024. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 277–299.

Auer, D., Portmann, L. and Tichelbaecker, T. (2025). Electoral Discrimination, Party Rationale, and the Underrepresentation of Immigrant-Origin Politicians. American Journal of Political Science, 69(1), 19–35.

Besco, R. (2020). Friendly fire: Electoral discrimination and ethnic minority candidates. Party Politics, 26(2), 215–226.

Ceva, E. and Stojanović, N. (2025). Exploring Electoral Discrimination Through an Ethics of Office Accountability. Representation, 1–19.

Cunningham, K. and Marsh, M. (2024). Voting behaviour. In: J. Coakley, M. Gallagher, E. O’Malley and T. Reidy, eds., Politics in the Republic of Ireland. Abingdon: Routledge, 156–187.

Dennison, J. (2019). A Review of Public Issue Salience: Concepts, Determinants and Effects on Voting. Political Studies Review, 17(4), 436–446.

Dennison, J. and Geddes, A. (2019). A Rising Tide? The Salience of Immigration and the Rise of Anti- Immigration Political Parties in Western Europe. The Political Quarterly, 90(1), 107–116.

Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (2025). Local Elections 2024: Results, Transfer of Votes and Statistics. [online] gov.ie. https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/09fe3ad4/Local _Elections_2024_-_Results_Transfers_of_Votes_and_Statistics.pdf [Accessed 15 Nov. 2025].

Electoral Commission (2025). Ballot paper design: addresses of candidates on the ballot paper. [online] electoralcommission.ie. https://cdn.electoralcommission.ie/app/uploads/2025/ 11/19122851/Ballot-Paper-Addresss-Research-Report- final-for-web-tagged.pdf [Accessed 8 Dec. 2025].

Farrell, D.M. and Sinnott, R. (2018). The electoral system. In: J. Coakley and M. Gallagher, eds., Politics in the Republic of Ireland. Abingdon: Routledge, 89–110.

Gallagher, M. (2021). The Results Analysed: The Definitive End of the Traditional Party System? In: M. Gallagher, M. Marsh and T. Reidy, eds., How Ireland Voted 2020. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 165–196.

Gunderson, J.R. (2024). Mapping issue salience divergence in Europe from 1945 to the present. Party Politics, 30(3), 435–449.

Harteveld, E., van der Brug, W., de Lange, S. and van der Meer, T. (2022). Multiple roots of the populist radical right:Support for the Dutch PVV in cities and the countryside. European Journal of Political Research, 61(2). Houses of the Oireachtas (2025). 34th Dáil General Election Results. [online] Oireachtas.ie, 113–122. https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/electoralProcess /electionResults/dail/2025/2025-04-02_34th-dail- general-election-results_en.pdf [Accessed 5 Dec. 2025].

Immigrant Council of Ireland (2024). Strength in Diversity II: Experiences of election candidates of a migrant background in the Irish local elections 2024 2 Strength in Diversity II. [online] Immigrant Council of Ireland. https://www.immigrantcouncil.ie/sites/default/files/20 24-09/Strength%20in%20Diversity%20II%20Final.pdf [Accessed 5 Dec. 2025].

Jankowski, M. and Müller, S. (2021). The incumbency advantage in second-order PR elections: Evidence from the Irish context, 1942–2019. Electoral Studies, 71, 102331.

Karlsson, L. and Ördén, H. (2025). Far-right discourses, right-wing populism and the question of housing in Ireland. Stockholm: The Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

Martin, N.S. and Blinder, S. (2021). Biases at the Ballot Box: How Multiple Forms of Voter Discrimination Impede the Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Ethnic Minority Groups. Political Behavior, 43.

Matson, M. and Fine, T.S. (2006). Gender, Ethnicity, and Ballot Information: Ballot Cues in Low-Information Elections. State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 6(1), 49–72.

McElroy, G. and Müller, S. (2025). What the 2024 Manifestos Reveal: Issue Salience and Left–Right Positions. In: M. Gallagher, E. O’Malley and T. Reidy, eds., How Ireland

Voted 2024. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 99–121. Mudde, C. (2017). Introduction to the populist radical right. In: C. Mudde, ed., The populist radical right: A reader. Abingdon: Routledge, 1-10.

Ó Rálaigh, C. (2025). The Irish general election of 2024: A battle lost before it was fought? Parliamentary Affairs, 78(4), 857–875.

O’Connor, N. (2024). ‘It was my kids’ bedtime’: Taoiseach says family homes ‘out of bounds’ after protest at his home. [online] TheJournal.ie. https://www.thejournal.ie/simon-harris- taoiseach-protest-at-house-6370631-May2024/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2025].

Portmann, L. and Stojanović, N. (2019). Electoral Discrimination Against Immigrant-Origin Candidates. Political Behavior, 41, 105–134.

Portmann, L. (2022). Do Stereotypes Explain Discrimination Against Minority Candidates or Discrimination in Favor of Majority Candidates? British Journal of Political Science, 52(2), 501–519.

RePass, D.E. (1971). Issue Salience and Party Choice. American Political Science Review, 65(2), 389–400.

Singh, S.P. (2009). The Dimensions of Politics and Voter Behaviour in Preferential Systems: The Case of Australia. Australian Journal of Political Science, 44(3), 421– 437.

Sipma, T. and Berning, C.C. (2021). Economic conditions and populist radical right voting: The role of issue salience. Electoral Studies, 74, 102416.