After all 39 constituencies across Ireland were tallied Sinn Fein received 24.5 percent of the first preference vote, outstripping the opposition Fianna Fail party on 22.2 percent and incumbent prime minister Leo Varadkar’s governing Fine Gael party on 20.9 percent.

Ireland operates on a single transferable vote system and Sinn Fein ran a slate of just 42 candidates for the 159 seats contested, meaning its strong performance may not result in it becoming the biggest party in Ireland’s next parliament.

But the left-wing party started celebrating its surge after campaigning on issues of health care and housing.

“It’s official (Sinn Fein) won the election — highest popular vote,” tweeted leader Mary Lou McDonald.

Counting is expected to continue on Monday, with analysts saying it could take two to three days before full results are known.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have traditionally taken turns in power in the Republic.

“It seems that we have now a three-party system,” said Varadkar at the counting center for his Dublin West constituency, AFP reported.

“That is going to make forming a government quite difficult.”

Varadkar failed to take the first of four seats as the count unfolded, with a Sinn Fein candidate announced as the first new lawmaker in his region.

Varadkar was elected on the fifth round of vote counts, relying on redistributed ballots in a morale-bruising episode for the premier.

At 2315 GMT state broadcaster RTE reported that 60 of 159 seats were filled, with 29 going to Sinn Fein.

But due to ballot transfers and Sinn Fein’s smaller slate of candidates an overall seat forecast should not be extrapolated from the early set of lawmakers elected.

Leaders entered negotiation mode as it became clear the next government will need to contain more than one party.

McDonald arrived at the main count center in the capital to huge fanfare from supporters and was returned to her central Dublin seat on Sunday evening.

“This is changing the shape of an old Irish politics. This is not a transient thing, this is just the beginning,” she told reporters.

In the last election in 2016, Sinn Fein got 13.8 percent of the vote.

McDonald said the two other main parties were “still in a state of denial, they’re still not listening to what the people have said.”

The 50-year-old said she ideally wanted “a government with no Fianna Fail or no Fine Gael in it” and had made contact with smaller parties, but added: “I will talk to and listen to everybody.”

Sinn Fein’s flagship policy is uniting Ireland and the British territory of Northern Ireland, reversing the partition of the island of Ireland in 1921.

Varadkar reiterated his campaign position that he would not form a coalition with Sinn Fein because of its past links to the Irish Republican Army paramilitary.

“Nobody can be forced into some sort of forced marriage or forced coalition,” he said.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin was elected to his seat in the city of Cork. He has previously said he would not back Fine Gael in a “grand coalition.”

But on Sunday night he seemed to soften his stance against a potential coalition with Sinn Fein.

“This is not just a change election — it has changed Irish elections themselves for the foreseeable future,” wrote columnist Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times newspaper.

“For a huge chunk of voters, change is being seen as something that comes from outside the system.”

Sinn Fein was “once inextricable from the IRA” and considered a “pariah,” he said, but younger voters, in particular, were drawn by the party’s promise of addressing income inequality.

Notably, an exit poll put Sinn Fein comfortably ahead with voters aged 18-24 and 25-34, with support at 32 percent in each age bracket.

But even once the make-up of the new chamber emerges, it could take much longer to cobble together a government.

Following Ireland’s 2016 election it took 70 days before a new minority coalition government was formed under Fine Gael.

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An Irish Times/ Ipsos MRBI poll published Monday found support for left-wing Sinn Fein at 25%, making them a clear leader, with support for center-right Fianna Fail at 23%. Support for governing Fine Gael was 20%.

Fine Gael and main opposition Fianna Fail both refuse to govern with Sinn Fein, citing their IRA links and opposing economic policies.

Sinn Fein, whose members were banned from speaking on Irish media until the mid-1990s before the end of Northern Ireland’s three decades of conflict, is part of a power-sharing government in the British-run province, which it ultimately wants to reunite with the Irish Republic.

The party has said it will not go into coalition government without a commitment to immediately start planning for a referendum on the unification of Ireland, a vote it would push to be held within five years, Reuters reported.

Approval for the government, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin all fell as Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald shot up seven points to 41% to become the post popular among all the main parties.

Despite the poll, Sinn Fein are unlikely to emerge as the largest party as it is running only 42 candidates, which is around half the number of candidates being fielded by both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

Sinn Fein would need to get almost all 42 elected to the 160-seat chamber to give it a shot at emerging as the largest party.

Getting such a return would be difficult for any party, analysts say. Ireland’s proportional representation system also favors parties running more than one candidate in larger constituencies.

A senior member of the Sinn Fein front bench David Cullinane responded to the opinion poll on Twitter by criticizing journalists who questioned his party’s strategy.

“We are standing enough candidates to be serious contenders for Government. The demand for change is heart-lifting.”

Earlier on Monday, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE reversed a decision to exclude party leader McDonald from a televised debate scheduled for Tuesday evening.

The broadcaster had planned to restrict the debate to Varadkar and Martin, the leaders of the two parties it considered most likely to lead the next Irish government based on empirical data.

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