Last weekend, Ireland elected as its next president a leftwing pacifist in the latest example of how Ireland has bucked the global trends of rightwing populism.

This was not a parliamentary election – although Catherine Connolly, an independent candidate, managed to unite leftwing parties, some previously at loggerheads – behind her. And presidential elections in Ireland are different. The office itself is largely ceremonial, but the figurehead is seen as the conscience of Irish society. The Irish electorate – at least since 1990, when Mary Robinson became Ireland’s first female president (she was followed by Mary McAleese and Michael D Higgins) – has a tendency to choose progressive presidents with intellectual heft. My own theory of who emerges victorious in Irish presidential elections is that they are thematic to the vanguard of prevailing social values: Robinson the feminist, McAleese the bridge builder between north and south, Higgins the socialist poet, and now Connolly, the anti-war president.

As in many societies, there’s a sense in Ireland that governmental politics rarely cross over into people’s lives. So how did a leftwing politician cut through the apathy and capture a broad coalition of voters? And what lessons does her victory hold for progressives elsewhere?

Connolly’s strength was her authenticity. Her personal story shaped her views about social justice and equality. She grew up in a large working-class family, raised by a widowed father in a council house on the outskirts of Galway. But although she is 68, and a seasoned politician and lawyer, Connolly was able to tickle voters’ attention with organically viral videos displaying her deft soccer and basketball skills. She is a keen runner and swimmer, with a marathon personal-best time of three hours 36 minutes. Her team requested that she halt her rollerblading hobby lest she get injured during the campaign.

She is not a crowd-rallying orator but a softly spoken woman given to nuance. She shirked soundbites, beyond repeating that she was representing a movement of a “new republic” and that she was an independent candidate with an independent mind. That movement is an ongoing cultural, social and political evolution in Ireland, where although far-right agitation is a feature of society, the electorate is shifting left, a Celtic revival underpins a good deal of popular culture, the Irish language is in ascendence and people now speak of Irish unity in real, not just romantic, terms. Connolly’s vibe appealed to voters bored with centre-right politicians whose overly generic messages are honed to the point of blandness.

Connolly’s politics are unapologetically on the left, and consistently so. She has repeatedly spoken out against war and militarisation, is highly critical of the EU’s response to what is accepted in Ireland as the genocide of Palestinians, and called out the US for funding and arming it. Her campaign videos centred the Palestinian solidarity movement in Ireland. She said she supported the marriage equality referendum in 2015 and the abortion rights referendum in 2018. She has also repeatedly raised the climate emergency, disability rights, Ireland’s housing crisis and the importance of the Irish language being valued, and articulated a positive vision for society rooted in equality.

When faced with apparent controversies, Connolly has stood by her judgment and, instead of flip-flopping, refused to backtrack, giving nuanced reasons for her thinking and behaviour. Unlike the centre-right Fine Gael party, which backed her opponent, she did not engage in negative campaigning and instead struck an optimistic tone, and remained calm in debates.

Connolly has been culturally attuned. She broke out of carefully choreographed media set pieces and took instead to popular podcasts for long interviews in which she told the story of her background and spoke about her vision for a presidency built on progressive values.

Her campaign leaned into the organising strategies of a grassroots movement rather than a centralised party machine. It learned from the decentralised volunteer networks used to huge effect during Ireland’s marriage equality and abortion referendums to mobilise canvassers around the country. This allowed people to organically take up the cause – folk-musician fundraisers in rural pubs, murals, memes, student organisers rallying the troops, and Instagram and TikTok influencers gravitating towards her campaign’s philosophy, giving it momentum as they communicated its message back to their audiences. Her campaign, as all successful movements are, was porous.

Connolly’s team understood visual culture as the dominant form of online communication, but also the motifs within that visual culture that appeal to younger people. This meant shirking the early-2000s and 2010s styles of political branding. The campaign design had Celtic-motif flourishes and was inspired by traditional Irish shopfront signage, echoing New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s hand-painted bodega sign references. In an interview with online news outlet the Journal, Anna Cassidy, the 26-year-old graphic designer who created the brand identity for Connolly’s campaign, said: “It proves that design can tell a story, carry a message, and connect with people on both an emotional and cultural level.”

Connolly will not have power to address the housing crisis, the dominant political and social issue in Ireland today. But she did talk about it. In reaching people where they are, using the language and imagery they communicate in, she has shaken the political establishment’s methods and demonstrated how an authentic connection with voters can be fostered with positive, sophisticated campaigning. In the end Connolly had something to say – but it’s her campaign tactics that got people listening.