Irish general election, 26th Feb 2016

[Јas]

So, I obviously failed in my efforts to complete the constituency previews and predictions. Work and family stuff compressed my available time.

Anyway, I've got my summary prediction complete.
If it's anything like previous efforts, the next Dáil won't look remotely like this - so it's best considered an exercise for my own amusement rather than anything else.

Constituency	FG	FF	SF	Lab	Other
Carlow-Kilk	2	2	1
Cavan-Mon	2	1	1
Clare	2	1			1 Ind (Harty)
Cork E	1	1	1	1
Cork NC	1	1	1		1 AAA-PBP
Cork NW	1	1			1 Ind (O’Shea)
Cork SC	1	2	1
Cork SW	2	1
Donegal	1	2	2
Dub Bay N	1	1	1		1 IndAlliance (McGrath); 1 Ind4Change (Brougham)
Dub Bay S	1			1	1 Renua, 1 Green
Dub Central	1		1		1 Ind (O’Sullivan)
Dub Fingal	1	1	1	1	1 Ind4Change (Daly)
Dub MW	1		1	1	1 AAA-PBP
Dub NW			1	1	1 SocDem
Dub Rathdown	2				1 IndAlliance (Ross)
Dub SC	1		1		1 AAA-PBP, 1 Ind4Change (Collins)
Dub SW	1	1	2		1 AAA-PBP
Dub W	1	1	1		1 AAA-PBP
Dún Laoghaire	2	1			1 AAA-PBP
Galway E	1	1			1 IndAlliance (Canney)
Galway W	1	1	1		2 Inds (Grealish, Connolly)
Kerry	2	1	1		1 Ind (M. Healy-Rae)
Kildare N	1	1		1	1 SocDem
Kildare S	1	1		1
Laois	1	1	1
Limerick City	2	1	1
Limerick Co	2	1
L'ford-W'Meath	2	1			1 IndAlliance (Moran)
Louth	2	1	2
Mayo	3	1
Meath E	2	1
Meath W	1	1	1
Offaly	1	1	1
Roscommon-Gal	1	1			1 Ind (Naughten)
Sligo-Leitrim	1	1	1		1 IndAlliance (Casserley)
Tipperary	2	1			1 WUAG, 1 Ind (Lowry)
Waterford	1	1	1		1 IndAlliance (Halligan)
Wexford	2	1		1	1 Ind4Change (Wallace)
Wicklow	2	1	1		1 SocDem
TOTAL	56	37	27	8	30

Totals
56 Fine Gael
37 Fianna Fáil
27 Sinn Féin
  8 Labour
  6 AAA-PBP
  6 Independent Alliance 
  4 Independents 4 Change
  3 Social Democrats
  1 Renua
  1 Green
  1 WUAG
  8 Independents

158 Total


Which would result in who knows what.
Possibly a FG minority with FF support on confidence/supply, to be followed with another election within a year or so.

We'll see soon enough.

[Јas]

The weather forecast for election day is mostly miserable.

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http://www.met.ie/forecasts/

[Јas]

The Irish broadcast media are now into the election moratorium period.

Meanwhile we have, what I presume is, the final election poll - and the first university-type polling effort in Ireland that I'm aware of.

TheJournal.ie commissioned Dublin Institute of Technology Market Research, who came up with:

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http://www.thejournal.ie/new-poll-2623859-Feb2016/

[Јas]

Below is a summary of the final polls from each of the national polling companies - with the simple average included. (Note that two companies didn't seem to poll the Independent Alliance separately from independents/others.) All polls below were published within the past 5 days.

Also included for reference are the 2011 General Election results.

	2011	B&A	MB	I-MRBI	RedC	DIT	Average
Fine Gael	36	30	27	28	30	32	29.4
Fianna Fáil	17	22	23	23	20	20	21.6
Sinn Féin	10	15	19	15	15	15	15.8
Labour	19	4	6	6	7	8	6.2
AAA-PBP	2	5	5	3	3	2	3.6
Soc Dems		3	4	3	4	4	3.6
Renua		3	2	2	2	2	2.2
Green	2	3	2	2	3	2	2.4
Ind Alliance		5		4	2		3.7
Ind/Oth	14	10	14	14	14	14	13.2

[Јas]

Oh, and Jas you seem to have forgotten that Louth has five seats, not four.

Ah. Thanks.
Transposition error. I also had an error in Cork SW.
Should be corrected now.

[Јas]

Polling is now open across the country.

Polls close at 22.00

Counting will begin tomorrow morning 09.00

[Јas]

RTÉ have commissioned B&A to do an exit poll.
Results will be published at 07.00 tomorrow morning.

The exit poll has a good record on accuracy.

[Јas]

There will be NO coverage on BBC Parliament (as there was in 2011) but there are other others.

Looks like BBC Parliament will carry an RTÉ feed from 18.35 tomorrow evening.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b073myv8

[Јas]

Any particular reason as to why Ireland counts the day after the election? I mean, when you think about it, it does make practical sense, but it seems rather unusual.

Because counting will take a long time - most constituencies will take all day tomorrow to get to a result.

Tomorrow evening returning officers will make decisions on whether to continue counting into Saturday night or suspend counting to resume Sunday, depending on their view of how long the process will take.

It's entirely possible that 1 or 2 constituencies will still be counting, or more probably recounting, come Monday.

Also, what time might actual results start filter in through from the count?

Unofficial 'tallies' will be widely reported early in the counting process from all count centres - giving a good impression of the direction of things.

First count declarations will probably start around lunchtime.

[Јas]

Your post about the Western islands prompted me to look into their history and discover the notion of the Gaeltacht, of which I was unaware. Who usually wins the Gaeltacht parts ? SF or FF ? I would guess it would not be FG or Labour territory, maybe Independents ?

The Gaeltacht areas are highlighted in dark green:


The three biggest Gaeltacht areas by population are those in Donegal, Galway, and Kerry.
The Local Electoral Areas that best encompass Gaeltacht areas are probably Glenties in Donegal and Connemara in Galway.

The 2014 local election party shares (with the changes on 2009) for those, and for their respective counties as a whole (for comparison), were:

	Glenties	Donegal	Connemara	Galway
Fianna Fáil	36 (+7)	29 (0)	33 (+5)	27 (+3)
Fine Gael	11 (-5)	16 (0)	20 (-11)	27 (-12)
Sinn Féin	23 (+7)	20 (+4)	8 (-2)	8 (+3)
Labour	6 (-4)	4 (-6)	4 (+4)	4 (-2)
Republican SF			7 (-1)	1 (-1)
Inds/Other	24 (-5)	32 (+3)	28 (-5)	33 (+10)

Republican Sinn Féin, which is linked with the Continuity IRA, won it's only council seat in the country in Connemara.

[Јas]

Regional breakdowns of exit poll

For comparison, the 2011 results:

	FF	FG	Lab	SF	Ind/Other
Dublin	13	30	29	8	20
Leinster	20	36	19	10	14
Munster	18	38	19	6	16
Conn-Ulster	19	40	9	15	16

[Јas]

I'm aware of three online sources who have projection models and release data on most polls.
Their projections based on this exit poll is:

	Adrian	Irish Polling	Irish Election
	Kavanagh	Report	Stats
FG	47	52	49
FF	39	41	40
SF	23	22	25
Lab	8	11	9
AAA-PBP	*	4	5
SocDem	*	4	4
Green	*	3	3
Renua	*	2	2
Ind/Other	41	19	21

*included in Ind/Other


Kavanagh is an academic at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth - with specialist interest in political geography.

The other two are online bloggers attempting to model things á la Nate Silver.

[Јas]

RTÉ Exit Poll
Conducted by B&A

Sample: 4,283

24.8 FG
21.1 FF
16.0 SF
  7.1 Lab
  4.7 AAA-PBP
  3.7 SocDems
  3.6 Greens
  3.0 Ind Alliance
  2.4 Renua
11.0 Independents
  2.6 Others

[Јas]

Remarkably, even worse news for Fine Gael than the Irish Times poll.

[Јas]

Projections based on the RTÉ exit:

	Adrian	Michael
	Kavanagh	Marsh
FG	47	46
FF	37	37
SF	24	27
Lab	8	9
SocDem	*	7
AAA-PBP	*	6
Green	*	4
Renua	*	3
Ind Alliance	*	4
Ind/Other	42	15

Kavanagh is an academic from NUI Maynooth.
Marsh is an academic from Trinity College - and a regular go to for RTÉ at election time.

[Јas]

Counting is now underway everywhere.

#ge16 for anyone looking to follow things on Twitter.

[Јas]

From RTÉ's livebog:
Tipperary returning officer Gerard Connelly said the count would end at 9pm tonight and resume at 10am tomorrow.

In Sligo-Leitrim, returning officer Pauraic O'Grady said the first count will not be available until later this evening and the count would not finish this evening.

[Јas]

Outgoing Labour TD for Dublin Bay South, Kevin Humphries is usually quick to make a call. He's just tweeted:
With inner city boxes open Murphy & Andrews will be elected early. Fight for last 2: Flynn, Humphreys , Ryan, O'Call, Creighton #ge16 #dubbs

https://twitter.com/KHumphreysTD/status/703509617427529728?s=03

[Јas]

Hyper-early indications from Kerry look good for the Healy-Raes.

[Јas]

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http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0227/771139-live-election-2016/

[Јas]

Dublin Central at 50% tally.
McDonald the only safe incumbent there.


First complete tally expected to be Kildare North shortly.

[Јas]

Too early to make any calls, but the following members of the cabinet's seats are in doubt:
Joan Burton (Lab-Dub W), Tánaiste & Minister for Social Protection
Brendan Howlin (Lab-Wexford), Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
James Reilly (FG-Dub Fingal), Minister for Children and Youth Affairs
Jan O'Sullivan (Lab-Limerick City), Minister for Education and Skills
Alan Kelly (Lab-Tipperary), Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government
Alex White (Lab-Dub Rathdown) Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources
Paschal Donohoe (FG-Dub Central), Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport

[Јas]

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https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/703541071838633984

[Јas]

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https://twitter.com/fiachkelly/status/703541796090073088


Mark Mortell is a senior advisor to Enda Kenny.

[Јas]

The last (and to date, only) time no party broke 30% in an Irish general election was June 1927.