Ireland by-elections, 2014

[ObserverIE]

Dublin has three seats in the European Parliament, so we'll see in May whether they can regain one seat (probably a three way scrap between FF, SF and SP (who hold the seat but might slip given that its not Joe Higgins' name on the ballot this time)

There have been no published opinion polls, but strategically placed leaks indicate that Hayes (FG) is likely to take the first seat, with Ryan (GP), Fitzpatrick (FF), Costello (Lab) and Boylan (SF) in the running for the remaining two. Internecine Trotskyite feuding seems likely to doom Murphy (SP).

[ObserverIE]

seems that the same thing happens when you join up with the SWP on either side of the Irish Sea.

are the Greens really in with a chance? I didn't even think they had any councilors anymore

edit: just looked up, they have 18 cllrs, last elections in 2009 before the big wipeout

Most of those are on town councils - which are being abolished.

They elected three county councillors in 2009, in Dundalk (Co. Louth), Kilkenny city and Ennis (Co. Clare). The councillor in Clare has since defected to Fianna Fáil.

[ObserverIE]

Funerals in Ireland are generally held two days after the death (sometimes a couple of extra days if the death was sudden or if relatives need to travel from abroad). In Britain, by contrast, several weeks can pass between the death and the funeral.

And yes, it is my constituency, although I live in its northern fringes.

[ObserverIE]

The funeral is tomorrow.

[ObserverIE]

Who should be favored in Longford–Westmeath? My first inclination would be to say FF, but it hasn't been a particularly good constituency for them in the recent past, and this government hasn't lost a by-election yet.

Assuming that it's not too soon...

I would expect FG to be favourite, assuming the candidate is Gabrielle McFadden, sister of the late TD and currently a member of Athlone Town Council and Westmeath County Council.

Basically the constituency divides into three parts:

Athlone/South Westmeath (pop. ~35K)
Mullingar/Mid-Westmeath (pop. ~35K)
Longford (pop. ~40K)

McFadden was based in Athlone, and the other existing FG TD (Bannon) is from Longford, so the FG candidate will almost certainly be from Athlone. If it's not Gabrielle McFadden, the candidate might be Mark Cooney (son of a former Justice minister and on the Gay Mitchell wing of the party) but in that case they would be unlikely to obtain a sympathy vote which helped them in Meath East.

Labour are only really organised in Mullingar/Mid-Westmeath - but have been extremely strong there - so they will probably run a candidate from that area but not one who would be strong enough to endanger their sitting TD (Penrose). It's likely to be less of a disaster for them than Meath East or the likely result in Dublin West but it still won't be pretty.

SF's candidate last time (Hogan) is from Athlone and will be the candidate again. He would be aiming to solidify his vote in the expectation of taking a seat next time (he was second runner-up in 2011).

For FF, the sitting TD (Troy) is from Mid-Westmeath (actually from the same village as the Labour TD) so they can either join everyone else in picking a candidate from Athlone or pick a candidate from Longford and appeal to county patriotism in the hope of getting a sizeable bloc of votes.

As far as Gully's prospective independents, the two names that would come to mind are:

Kevin "Boxer" Moran, a former FF councillor from Athlone who left the party before the 2011 election when veteran TD Mary "Mammy" O'Rourke decided to run yet again. Moran outpolled "Mammy", who got run out of town on a rail, but I'm not sure whether he's reconciled with his old party or not.

Mae Sexton, a former PD TD from Longford who joined Labour before the last election, was an unsuccessful candidate in 2011, and left the party about a year after the election. If all the main candidates in the by-election are from Westmeath, she might well run on a localist ticket.

[ObserverIE]

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/gabrielle-mcfadden-confirms-by-election-run-1.1767216

[ObserverIE]

Box-by-box tallies for Longford-Westmeath from the 2011 election:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9DLhLl2w63QzQ3VkZ3ZFlNSFU

[ObserverIE]

Box-by-box tallies for Longford-Westmeath from the 2011 election:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9DLhLl2w63QzQ3VkZ3ZFlNSFU

Where did you get this?

Longford Leader and Westmeath Examiner.

[ObserverIE]

Box-by-box tallies for Longford-Westmeath from the 2011 election:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9DLhLl2w63QzQ3VkZ3ZFlNSFU

It's the results of the Longford part of Longford-Westmeath.

It's easier to read if you download it and open in Excel or Google Sheets.

[ObserverIE]

Box-by-box tallies for Longford-Westmeath from the 2011 election:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9DLhLl2w63QzQ3VkZ3ZFlNSFU

It's the results of the Longford part of Longford-Westmeath.

Go down to page 20.

Thanks.

To summarise again, in Weatmarth, FG won Athlone, Coole and Kilbeggan EAs. They won all the districts in Athlone.

Moran, an ex-FF member (until the selection convention) who ran as an independent, won a couple of polling districts in Athlone East Urban and a couple of neighbouring districts (Coosan, Creggan) which are Athlone suburbia.

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In the bits of Coole that are in Longford-Westmeath, Labour won the south (nearest Mullingar) and FG won the north. Similarly in Kilbeggan, Labour won the areas nearer to Mullingar than to Athlone.

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[ObserverIE]

I realise now that my choice of language was poor. Longford town isn't very rural, though Sexton's electoral base is more the rural outskirts rather than the estates of resettled Dublin council tenants; I should have said "areas of Ireland outside major cities" tend to overlook party affiliation.

Erm, which estates of resettled Dublin council tenants would those be?

Glack and "Longford Rural" are the eastern and western fringes of Longford town beyond the official town boundaries (and Glack, BTW, is no longer in "Glack", having been moved inside the town). Sexton lives in the Demesne (much less posh than it sounds) which would be in Longford Urban North. Longford Urban Central is the bulk of the town including the council estates (and Longford has one or two very deprived council estates).

Sexton's vote was strongest in Longford town and its immediate surrounds and petered out the further you went from the town (her lowest votes in Longford were in two rural booths on the Cavan border where the Labour vote was less than 10% - and where FF held up relatively well).

[ObserverIE]

Box-by-box tallies for Longford-Westmeath from the 2011 election:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9DLhLl2w63QzQ3VkZ3ZFlNSFU

In short, FG won almost everwhere.
Only exceptions are in Longford EA. More specifically, a tie in Glack with Labour, and Labour wins in Longford Rural and Longford Urban Central.

These places are all in Longford Town. They voted Labour because Mae Sexton (Labour) is from Glack. I'm sure they also voted for Mae Sexton (PD) in 2002 when she got elected on the other side of the political spectrum. This is a good illustration of how weakly party affiliation determines voting in Ireland, especially in rural areas.

Mae Sexton has had the sort of career trajectory only a TD could have.

She's not actually moved that much if at all - she's just had different party labels slapped on her at different times (Labour had already been wooing her in the mid 90s before the PDs intervened).

[ObserverIE]

Which in turn is a good illustration of how weakly party affiliation can determine party recruitment in Ireland

[ObserverIE]

This is a country in which a Labour-PD swing voter was actually a thing once.

I can imagine the sort of creature that might be (social liberal but hands off my wallet), and imagine most of them would have lived up your direction.

Sexton herself wouldn't fit particularly well into either of the parties she was a member of.

[ObserverIE]

This is a country in which a Labour-PD swing voter was actually a thing once.

I can imagine the sort of creature that might be (social liberal but hands off my wallet), and imagine most of them would have lived up your direction.

Sexton herself wouldn't fit particularly well into either of the parties she was a member of.

I believe (I don't have the data on me) that there was at least by 2002 a surprising strong tendency for transfers of one party to go to the other. And yes, they would have been mostly around here but then again by 2002 the PDs as a party organization were essentially restricted to around here and the O'Malley legacy vote in Limerick.

Plus the Molloy legacy vote in Galway (which has outlasted everything else).

And who can forget the 2007 election, where Labour promised more and bigger income tax cuts than everyone else, and the PDs promised to increase the old-age pension to €300 and abolish stamp duty "because we don't need the money" ((c) M. McDowell)?

[ObserverIE]

Labour's 2007 campaign was perhaps the most cringeworthy campaign by a political party* in modern Irish political history although I'm aware that there's great competition for the title.

(* - speaking of Stamp duty who can forget the blatant boosterism of the Sindo's campaign to abolish it during the 2007 campaign? Thinking about it for a minute makes me glad for a moment that the bubble popped as ingloriously as it did).

No, I think FG's 2002 "compensate taxi drivers and Eircom shareholders" campaign takes that particular crown, and even FG's 2007 "Sign The Contract!!!" effort runs it close. But to quote the 2007 Labour leader, "isn't that the kind of thing that you tend to say during elections?".

It does make it easier to understand how FF won three successive elections when that was the opposition.

[ObserverIE]

But still though:

At least they can say they inspired Pharrell...

I see your 2007 and raise you:

[ObserverIE]

Getting back to the by-elections, this week's edition of the local chip-wrapper mentions two possible Longford-based candidates for Fianna Fáil:

• Pat O'Rourke, a former president of the ICMSA (the second-largest farmers' organisation), who has unsuccessfully sought a nomination for the European Parliament elections in 2009 and 2014, and
• Philip Reynolds, the son of the former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds.

This, of course, assumes that none of the county councillors or prospective county councillors have other ideas.

O'Rourke strikes me as being "meh" in terms of appeal, but Reynolds might be more interesting. His father's reputation has improved with time (especially given whom he followed and preceded as Fianna Fáil leaders) and it's not as if we in Longford are blessed with our current representation.

Updated: More here.

[ObserverIE]

News from Dublin West (although it is the Denis O'Brien Daily Indo).

[ObserverIE]

Fianna Fáil HQ have decreed that the candidate for Longford-Westmeath must come from the Athlone area. In effect, this means that the latest member of the O'Rourke dysentery dynasty will be anointed as candidate tomorrow night. Longford FFers are notably unhappy.

In Fine Gael, Peter Burke, the unsuccessful Mullingar-based candidate at the last election (who outpolled McFadden on first preferences but was overhauled on transfers) is talking about seeking the nomination, but is unlikely to be successful.

For Labour, the likely candidate is Denis Leonard, a councillor from Kinnegad in the far south-east of the constituency.

Paul Hogan, an Athlone councillor and the candidate last time, will run for Sinn Féin.

==============

In Dublin West, David McGuinness and Ruth Coppinger, who were respectively the FF and Socialist Party candidates in the 2011 by-election, have both been selected to fight the seat a second time.

In winning the nomination, McGuinness defeated Anita Lenihan, sister of the former finance minister and TD Brian Lenihan, niece of the former Longford-Westmeath Fianna Fáil TD Mary "Mammy" O'Rourke, and first cousin of the soon-to-be-anointed Longford-Westmeath by-election candidate Aengus O'Rourke.

[ObserverIE]

News From The Sticks:

Son of Mammy duly anointed as FF candidate last night without opposition after two other candidates were locked in a cupboard by Mammy withdrew.

Deathbed Requestee due to be anointed by Fine Gael without opposition after Burke withdraws.

Rumour that Labour (who took 15,000 votes in 2011) may decide not to run a candidate in order to concentrate on trying to hold their county council seats in Westmeath. Even I find it difficult to believe they'd be that defeatist.

[ObserverIE]

(Mammy out of sight in role as back-seat driver)

As an aside, this was the first preference vote in Athlone urban area in 2011 (the appeal of the O'Rourke name in Athlone supposedly being the point of running Son of Mammy as candidate):

FG 2,025 (of which McFadden took 1,902)
Moran (ex-FF) 1,760
FF 877 (of which Mammy took 809)
SF 823
Lab 560
Green 27
Other independents 104

[ObserverIE]

Please?

If you insist...



(That'll teach him...)

[ObserverIE]

Labour to run paper candidate Trinity College student in Longford-Westmeath by-election.

[ObserverIE]

The Irish Times reports that a prospective Labour candidate pulled out of the Longford-Westmeath by-election. It doesn't refer to the student Ennis; I think it could be an unnamed predecessor to him. The Westmeath Examiner says he will be confirmed on Monday. All credit to him for taking on an unpopular berth.

Labour has named its chairperson, Loraine(sic) Mulligan, as candidate for the seat in Dublin West. She has no known connection with the constituency, being a native of Longford and living in Dublin Central (Phibsborough), but apparently none of the local councillors or activists were willing to accept the chalice.

Perhaps she could do a swap with the Trinity undergraduate: she would be contesting a constituency that she had some connection with and he could save on the travelling expenses and avoid disruption to his exams.

It's only a matter of time before Labour resort to the press gang as a means of candidate recruitment.