Elections in Ireland, the nationalist party Sinn Féin throws away the popular vote

• Elections in Ireland: the nationalist party Sinn Féin leads the way and opens the government
• Elections in Ireland: counting in progress, challenge to 3 until the last ballot, 160 seats are up for grabs
• Exit in Ireland: it is a threesome, stalemate. You count the cards

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Sinn Féin of the occasional Mary Lou McDonald defeats the popular vote, wins more seats than expected and turns her historic election victory in Ireland into triumph. The real data of the slow scrutiny certify and strengthen the boom of the party of the nationalist left, the standard-bearer of reunification with Ulster in Brexit times, but above all of a radical economic and social platform, reopening the games on the formation of the new government: in a parliamentary puzzle in which the two moderate pro-EU rival formations that for a century competed for power - Micheal Martin's Fianna Fail (liberals) and the outgoing Prime Minister Leo Varadkar (Ppe )'s Fine Gael - risk not being able to remain in saddle not even joining. Not alone, at least.

The final percentages decree an outcome that goes beyond the already sensational three-way tie indicated by the exit polls. With Sinn Féin, once the political arm of the IRA guerrillas and republican guide force in Northern Ireland alone, projected at 24.5%; the Fianna Fail stopped at 22.2; and the Fine Gael of the modernizer Varadkar - dear to the liberal media for the image of the country's first gay leader, progressive in the field of civil rights, but liberal in economics and unable to make felt the impact of the revitalization of GDP on the trench of inequalities domestic - just third below a disappointing 21%.

A result that, according to the proportional transferable local system with counting of the first preferences and then of the reserve ones, translates for the McDonald's party into just under 40 deputies. Almost full loot compared to only 42 candidates presented. And in fact on par with Fine Gale and Fianna Fail, benefited in subsequent preferences.

"We won, we are first in the popular vote," exulted Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin standardization leader who took over two years ago from Patriarch Gerry Adams, the charismatic and cumbersome son of the old generation of Troubles and conflict. It is "a revolution", she added, announcing that she is ready to try to have her say on the government if anything: in the first instance, attempting the charter of a minority coalition with Verdi and other center-left groups (a twenty seats in total); but without excluding the dialogue - from strong positions if he succeeds - with the two great center-right opponents.

The problem is how to overcome 80 seats and guarantee an absolute majority in a Parliament that has 160 seats. A difficult task, with the numbers on the table. On paper, an alliance between losers Fine Gael-Fianna Fail remains the simplest solution, perhaps with some banks from independent and minor forces. But Martin and Varadkar, who in the election campaign had promised absolute ostracism towards Sinn Féin, appear to be very weakened: in discussion in their own leadership and also forced on a personal level to humiliating repechage to be re-elected in the respective constituencies of Cork and Dublin, where instead her companion Mary Lou passed by a carriage.

Radical on issues such as welfare or public spending, but able to soften the Eurosceptic instincts of his party and at the same time to postpone the dream of a referendum on Irish unification fed by Belfast and its surroundings by 5 years from the contradictions of the path taken by the great British neighbor towards Brexit, McDonald seems already at ease in a (hypothetical) new more institutional dimension. From London - which in Northern Ireland has recognized Sinn Féin for years as an inconvenient and necessary interlocutor - Boris Johnson's Tory government has meanwhile known that it is determined to maintain "close relations" with anyone destined to come to power in Dublin. While on Twitter the old Adams is enjoying the earthquake triggered by his dolphin. And in a photomontage shows Varadkar and Martin in the guise of babies held firmly in the arms of Mary Lou, complete with a mocking caption in Gaelic and English: "It is time to put the puppets to sleep".

Oiche mhaith. Time to put the boys to bed. pic.twitter.com/bfEoXSNQh1