A hotly contested race is anticipated following the withdrawal of one of the three candidates vying to succeed popular President Michael D Higgins.

Voters in Ireland will head to the polls on Friday to elect a new president for a seven-year term.

While the Irish presidency is a mostly ceremonial role, this election takes place amid a historic shift towards a more polarised political system, Barry Colfer, director of research at Dublin’s Institute of International and European Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Since the establishment of the Irish Free State in December 1922 and the subsequent end of the Irish Civil War in May 1923, Irish politics, unlike in other European countries, have not been drawn along left-right lines, he said. “What we’re seeing today for the first time in Irish history is a presidential election between objectively left-wing and right-wing candidates.”

This change has become more apparent in recent years. In the 2020 general election, left-wing nationalist party Sinn Fein – the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army – won the most first-preference votes for the first time since the country’s founding, bringing an end to the traditional two-party dominance of the centre-right parties Fianna Fail (FF) and Fine Gael (FG). By the end of the voting process, Sinn Fein had 37 seats, finishing close to neck-and-neck with FF at 38 and FG at 35.

There are 174 seats in Dail Eireann (Irish for Ireland’s lower house of parliament) in total, with 88 needed to form a government.

The two previously dominant parties’ origins date back to the Irish Civil War and its aftermath, with FG’s forerunner supporting the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which granted the country partial independence, and FF opposing it.

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For the first time in their history, FF and FG were forced to enter into a formal coalition government with the Green Party in 2020 to be able to form a government. Following the 2024 election, they partnered with independents instead of the Greens.

Who serves as president of Ireland, and what do they do?

The presidency has a relatively limited political role, comparable to that of monarchs in other countries, said Gail McElroy, a professor of political science at Trinity College Dublin. It is “seen as a unifying role beyond politics”.

The president represents Ireland abroad and hosts visiting heads of state and other dignitaries at the official presidential residence, Aras an Uachtarain, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

The president is, above all, responsible for ensuring that the Irish Constitution is followed.

After the presidency was established in 1938, one year after the current Bunreacht na hEireann (Irish constitution) was adopted, it was generally held by a statesman with a long affiliation to one of the two main political parties. For instance, Eamon de Valera, one of the leading political figures during Ireland’s War for Independence and founder of FF, served as taoiseach (prime minister) from 1937 to 1948, 1951 to 1954 and from 1957 to 1959, and then as the country’s t