{"id":104101,"date":"2025-10-25T23:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T23:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/104101\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T23:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T23:09:13","slug":"ireland-elects-left-wing-president-in-anti-government-landslide-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/104101\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland elects left-wing president in anti-government landslide \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, crowds of up to 2,000 people clashed with riot police<\/a> protecting Citywest, a hotel and conference center southwest of Dublin that has been turned into the state\u2019s biggest shelter for asylum seekers. That area registered one of the highest rates of spoiled ballots.<\/p>\n

And on Friday, Sinn F\u00e9in leader Mary Lou McDonald, who had opted not to seek the presidency herself<\/a>, was subjected to vulgar threats from an anti-immigration activist as she canvassed in her central Dublin constituency for Connolly. That man, who posted video footage<\/a> of his verbal assault on McDonald and other Sinn F\u00e9in canvassers, was arrested Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Humphreys \u2014 who had stepped into the breach when Fine Gael\u2019s original candidate, former European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness, quit the race<\/a> citing health problems \u2014 conceded defeat hours before the official result. Humphreys, too, expressed worries about the rising level of social media-driven harassment.<\/p>\n

Humphreys, a member of the Republic of Ireland\u2019s tiny Protestant minority, said she hadn\u2019t regretted running despite suffering a barrage of online insults belittling her family\u2019s background. She said that vitriol had demonstrated that her country wasn\u2019t yet ready to reconcile, and potentially unite as Irish nationalists want, with Protestants in the neighboring U.K. territory of Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family and I were subject to some absolutely awful sectarian abuse. As a country, I thought we had moved on from that,\u201d Humphreys said. \u201cIf we\u2019re ever to have a united Ireland, we have to respect all traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, crowds of up to 2,000 people clashed with riot police protecting Citywest, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[62040,128,49136,4644,64197,61,60,7038,37801,3658,1634,977,1843,43,2443,7905,58,303],"class_list":["post-104101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-asylum","tag-bonds","tag-catholic","tag-elections","tag-european-politics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics","tag-mairead-mcguinness","tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","tag-media","tag-michael-d-higgins","tag-micheal-martin","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-platforms","tag-social-media","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}