After the recent Irish elections, the three leading political factions have reached a near deadlock, as per the exit polls conducted immediately after the voting concluded on Friday.

The poll, which included 5,018 voters from across the country, was conducted by several organisations including Trinity College Dublin, Ipsos B&A, The Irish Times and broadcasters RTÉ. The results suggest that none of the parties have won decisively, indicating that Ireland may have to undergo weeks of intense negotiations to form a multi-party government that can command a stable majority in the parliament.

The counting of votes commenced at 9 a.m. on Saturday with the first winners expected to be announced in the afternoon. However, due to Ireland’s intricate proportional representation system, where lawmakers are elected from constituencies with three to five seats each, multiple rounds of counting will be required in many districts. It’s predicted that the final count for all 174 seats in the Dáil Éireann parliament won’t be completed until Sunday evening.

The exit poll, which has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points, indicates that the Sinn Féin party, led by Mary Lou McDonald, was slightly ahead, garnering 21.1 percent of first-preference votes.

Simon Harris’ Fine Gael party came in a close second with 21 percent of the votes, while Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil party trailed in third place with 19.5 percent.

Usually, to form an Irish government, a coalition of parties with approximately 50 percent combined support is needed to secure a working majority.

If the exit poll results are confirmed in the official results this weekend, none of the combinations of the top two parties will have a sufficient number of lawmakers to achieve this objective.

Specifically, the most plausible foundation for a new coalition, a reiteration of the center-ground heavyweights Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, would still fall short of the required numbers to govern without the backing of a third or even fourth party or potentially unpredictable independent lawmakers.

The previous three-party Harris administration brought Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to power with the support of the smaller Green Party, which added a left-leaning slant to their government. However, the exit poll suggests that the Greens have suffered significant losses in this election, receiving only 4 percent of first-preference votes.

Under these conditions, to retain power, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would need to convince larger new partners to collaborate. Both have dismissed the idea of working with the nationalist Sinn Féin, leaving McDonald with limited, if any, effective coalition possibilities.