Presidential Election, 24 October 2025

On 24 October 2025, Ireland held its presidential election. The president is elected for seven years (renewable once) through a single transferable vote system, which allows voters to rank the candidates based on their preferences (IFES 2025). Since Ireland is a parliamentary republic, presidential powers are limited and most of these are formal/ceremonial. However, the president of Ireland does have the power to refer a bill to the Supreme Court if they consider it unconstitutional, and to refuse to dissolve parliament despite a request from the Taoiseach (prime minister) (Electoral Commission n.d.a; Deloy 2025a).

Elections are administered by the Electoral Commission of Ireland, which was established in 2023 under the Electoral Reform Act 2022. The body consists of seven members: the chairperson nominated by the Chief of Justice, four ordinary members and two ex-officio members (Electoral Commission n.d.a; Electoral Commission n.d.b.).

The outgoing president Michael D. Higgins was ineligible to stand for re-election, having already served two terms. Only two candidates stood: an independent, Catherine Conolly, who was backed by left-wing parties; and Heather Humphreys, a member of the centre-right Fine Gael party. Jim Gavin, nominated by the centre-right Fianna Fáil party, had initially registered his candidacy but withdrew from the race before the election. Nevertheless, since the nominations had already been finalized his name remained on the ballot, and he received 103,568 first preference votes (7 per cent). Catherine Conolly won the election with 63 per cent of first preference votes, while Heather Humphreys finished second with 29 per cent (Cox 2025).

The electoral process was affected by instances of mis- and disinformation narratives. One of the most notable campaigns on social media, which encouraged voters to spoil their ballots, was fueled by misleading claims. Although ballot spoiling is a legitimate electoral practice, some social media posts made baseless claims that the election would be “rigged” or “fraudulent”, or urged people to photograph their spoiled ballots and share them online—an act potentially constituting a crime; some of these images were also supplemented with hate speech toward minorities (ISD/Hope and Courage Collective 2025). 

As a result of this trend, which peaked in the final days before polling, an unprecedented 213, 738 ballots were spoiled, which represents 12.9 per cent of the total turnout (Deloy 2025b).

False claims were also directed at all three candidates, including the withdrawn candidate, Jim Gavin. Allegations covered private life, so-called ‘involvement’ in crimes, allegiances and affiliations. For example, Heather Humphreys was subject to sectarian abuse by being falsely associated with the protestant organization, the Orange Order, while Catherine Connolly was falsely linked to Hamas and the Freemasons (ISD/Hope and Courage Collective 2025). Both Humphreys and Connolly were featured in posts made with generative AI tools, whether as part of the ‘spoil the vote’ campaign and/or these baseless allegations. One deepfake video mimicked a news report by the national broadcaster RTÉ, and purported to announce that Connolly had withdrawn from the race, the election was cancelled, and Humphreys was declared the winner (ISD/Hope and Courage Collective 2025). Humphreys was also subject to misogynistic sexualized mockery and humiliation in a video where commentator Joe Brolly performed an impression of Humphreys performing a sex act (Coyne 2025).  

Compared to the most recent parliamentary, European and local elections, this election was free of electoral violence. However, two women were allegedly assaulted while canvassing for Catherine Connolly in the capital (ISD/Hope and Courage Collective 2025).

45.8 per cent of eligible voters went to the polls in this election. While this figure is substantively lower compared to the parliamentary election in 2024, when turnout was 59.7 per cent, it was an increase of 1.9 per cent on the previous presidential election in 2018 (International IDEA n.d.).