So Ireland had an election: Trump didn't win, but nobody else did either

In a year of global political turmoil, anti-incumbent fervor, across-the-board cynicism and the looming shadow of Donald Trump, voters in the Republic of Ireland appear to have delivered the most surprising verdict of all: No change, thanks. For the Irish media, the weekend's most irresistible story concerned an accused Dublin gangster known as Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, who came startlingly close to winning one of those seats. At the final pre-election debate last week, Ireland's three major party leaders spoke warily about a possible "transatlantic crash" — or, more specifically, a "Trump shock" — that could result from the incoming American president's unpredictable but certainly disruptive protectionist policies. Indeed, there's an unmistakable "back to the future" quality to this year's election results: Fianna Fáil, the long-governing and largely anti-ideological party founded by Eamon de Valera, Ireland's dominant 20th-century political figure, was virtually wiped out in the 2011 elections, having driven the national economy straight into the 2008 iceberg. If the disunited Irish left was at least a borderline loser in this election, so too was Simon Harris, Ireland's youthful and energetic outgoing taoiseach and the leader of Fine Gael, which is normally identified as a center-right neoliberal party but during this campaign appeared to promise almost everything to almost everyone.