If coming across as natural and personable counts in a presidential election – and it does – then Catherine Connolly is winning that particular race. Connolly has been quietly using podcasts to reach younger audiences and give listeners a sense of who she is and what her values are.
She has spoken at length on The Blindboy Podcast; Catch Up with Louise McSharry, The Simpler Life?; Free State, and Ready To Be Real by Síle Seoige. These platforms have allowed Connolly to tell her story, including outlining her life growing up in social housing in Galway in a family of seven sisters and seven brothers, the death of her mother when she was nine years old, the jobs she’s had, her love of reading, that she has run marathons, her political career, her positions and values, the issues she cares about and so on.
As a result, I know much more about Connolly now than I did before this campaign started. Conversely, I know pretty much the same amount today as I did about Heather Humphreys’s life and values pre-campaign.
The podcast drive has been a good strategy for Connolly. Podcasts offer a more intimate, candid setting to lay out your stall. Connolly has been able to do this because she actually can talk at length in a reflective and authentic manner. The format suits her because she doesn’t speak in soundbites. She rarely sounds awkward, nervous or like she’s regurgitating media-prep banalities. In these interviews, she also demonstrates intellectual heft, something I think Irish voters consider when choosing a president. “I’m not given to a quick retort,” she told Seoige, “I read.”
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Connolly’s social media game peaked with a viral video of spontaneous keepie-uppies. She has about 10 times the number of followers on TikTok and Instagram as Humphreys. Does this matter? In a two-candidate race, it just might. It at least shows that Connolly’s message is spreading more widely online.
By contrast, the only widely-shared videos on social media I’ve seen of Humphreys have been ones of missteps, such as her much-derided response when asked if she supported fox hunting. She evaded the question and began somewhat bizarrely itemising her pets. Saying “I have a lovely little dog” does not exactly reach a level of discourse or insight the Irish public expects.
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On podcasts, Connolly gets to give us a sense of the kind of president she would be. She talks about reflecting Irish values, particularly around being anti-war and maintaining our military neutrality. In a world increasingly characterised by violence and nihilistic authoritarians, with a genocide unfolding on our screens, that will resonate with many voters, whether she’s their preferred candidate or not. Her stance on Palestine, shared by a majority of the Irish public, is vocal, visible and consistent.
What is Humphreys’s authentic theme? It’s not clear.
The semiotics – signs, symbols and imagery – of Connolly’s campaign reflect the contemporary affection for traditional Irish culture. Her Guth na nDaoine (voice of the people) campaign scarf, designed by Aoife Cawley, has an aesthetic that chimes. The campaign’s broader visual identity, evoking hand-painted traditional Irish shopfront signage, echoes the graphic design of New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s bodega signage-inspired branding. This is to say, the visual communication is considered.
Humphreys is not a hugely effective communicator. She declares herself a people person, which is something she should aim to show, not tell. Although gone from government, her interactions and appearances have a haze of Kildare Street clunkiness. When asked an “and finally” question about party pieces on Drivetime, Connolly bemoaned no longer being able to do 100 keepie-uppies. Under no pressure, Humphreys froze, reverting to an empty talking point and suggesting her “best skill set is listening”.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Fine Gael is in attack mode. This will probably backfire, because the public wants to know why a candidate should be president, not what they have to critique about their opposition. Jennifer Carroll MacNeill was strongly criticised by Ivana Bacik for what Bacik characterised as “increasingly desperate smear tactics”.
In a widely-shared audio clip from a Newstalk podcast, Ivan Yates said the quiet part out loud: “So Fine Gael ring me and say ‘how do we reverse this?’ . . . I would smear the bejaysus out of her [Connolly], simply because you’ve nothing to lose.”
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Podcasts are easy for Connolly. She has racked up the broadcast hours in soft interviews away from mainstream media. But if Humphreys freezes under no pressure, Connolly can stumble when squeezed. Her strength is calmness. Her weakness is communicating with clarity in contexts where there’s little space for nuance. That said, the public still felt she ran away with the Virgin Media One television debate. (Forty-four per cent said she won it, 6 per cent said Humphreys did.)
Connolly’s campaign, like the candidate, has been motoring along quietly. The media lighting on her perceived missteps, or Fine Gael getting confrontational, does not appear to be landing. This is partly because Connolly’s campaign has found a way to connect outside the traditional set pieces and centres of media and political power. Those big set pieces still matter at a time when many voters remain undecided. Plenty will stay away altogether, partly because so many people are jaded and uninspired by what those same centres of power express and offer.
