Election Wrap Up
08/06/09 21:23 Filed in: Politics
The counting is
pretty much done and dusted and the results in. So
how did my
predictions for the Euros stand up?
Dublin: I had Mary Lou retaining her seat at the expense of Eoin Ryan. In fact neither of them retained their seats, and Joe Higgins snuck in for the final seat. Two out of three.
East: McGuinness, Childers and Aylward. 3/3.
South: Crowley and Kelly x 2. 3/3 again.
North West: Not yet formally declared, but it will be Gallagher, Higgins and Harkin. 3/3 again.
That makes 11 out of 12. Dammit, it’s a pity FaceTheBall.com doesn’t do elections.
The big story across both elections is of course the hammering taken by Fianna Fáil and the Greens. FF lost a pile of seats at a local level and their MEP in Dublin. The Greens were wiped off the map in Dublin and only managed to win three local authority seats. Their two Euro candidates, Senators Deirdre de Burca and Dan Boyle both performed dismally. If there was a general election tomorrow, it would be hard to see a single Green TD retain their seat.
There are a couple of other stories worth noting too. Loopertas disappeared in a puff of smoke overnight. Never before has so much money been spent on so inept a campaign. Caroline Simons could only manage a paltry 3.3% in Dublin, while Raymond O’Malley managed 1% more in East. Declan Ganley benefitted from the dearth of Galway-based candidates from the major parties to gain a respectable 13.7% first preference share in North West. Sadly for him, that wasn’t enough, and so he went to the presiding officer to point out that some of his votes may have been allocated to another candidate. As it turned out, he had actually benefitted from the error, and his raising the issue cost him about 3000 votes. He conceded defeat earlier this evening and promised to bow out of politics. With his going, hopefully that is the last we will see of Loopertas on the Irish political scene.
Incidentally, in their initial blaze of glory phase, they claimed they were on course to win over 100 seats across Europe. They managed one.
The other story is Sinn Féin. This election was tailor made for a protest party like SF. Mid-term, hugely unpopular government - just the sort of situation where Sinn Féin could and should profit. What happened? They hit the buffers, that’s what. Their share of first preferences was almost identical to 2004, they made no gains in council seats, and failed to win any European seat. The party brass will have to look closely at what happened, particularly in Dublin. They lost four council seats in the capital and their golden girl Mary Lou McDonald lost her European seat. If she had lost the seat to Eoin Ryan, that could be explained away by the fact that Dublin had gone from four seats to three, but they both lost out to Joe Higgins. SF should have been able to mop up the disaffected voters in Dublin, especially those from the left, but instead these voters put their trust in Labour, the Socialist Party and the Ideology Before Reality Alliance. Add to the fact that SF lost a TD in 2007, and this is a party that is going nowhere fast.
So overall, it was a satisfactory result, especially in the Euros. Only one anti-Lisbon candidate got elected MEP, and the two that were there both lost out. By and large, we have a group of MEPs that are actually interested in representing our interests in Europe, and are supporters of the European ideal.
Contrast this to the UK, from where 13 UKIP and two British National Party MEPs will soon be booking their flights to Strasbourg.
At least we haven’t got that to contend with.
Dublin: I had Mary Lou retaining her seat at the expense of Eoin Ryan. In fact neither of them retained their seats, and Joe Higgins snuck in for the final seat. Two out of three.
East: McGuinness, Childers and Aylward. 3/3.
South: Crowley and Kelly x 2. 3/3 again.
North West: Not yet formally declared, but it will be Gallagher, Higgins and Harkin. 3/3 again.
That makes 11 out of 12. Dammit, it’s a pity FaceTheBall.com doesn’t do elections.
The big story across both elections is of course the hammering taken by Fianna Fáil and the Greens. FF lost a pile of seats at a local level and their MEP in Dublin. The Greens were wiped off the map in Dublin and only managed to win three local authority seats. Their two Euro candidates, Senators Deirdre de Burca and Dan Boyle both performed dismally. If there was a general election tomorrow, it would be hard to see a single Green TD retain their seat.
There are a couple of other stories worth noting too. Loopertas disappeared in a puff of smoke overnight. Never before has so much money been spent on so inept a campaign. Caroline Simons could only manage a paltry 3.3% in Dublin, while Raymond O’Malley managed 1% more in East. Declan Ganley benefitted from the dearth of Galway-based candidates from the major parties to gain a respectable 13.7% first preference share in North West. Sadly for him, that wasn’t enough, and so he went to the presiding officer to point out that some of his votes may have been allocated to another candidate. As it turned out, he had actually benefitted from the error, and his raising the issue cost him about 3000 votes. He conceded defeat earlier this evening and promised to bow out of politics. With his going, hopefully that is the last we will see of Loopertas on the Irish political scene.
Incidentally, in their initial blaze of glory phase, they claimed they were on course to win over 100 seats across Europe. They managed one.
The other story is Sinn Féin. This election was tailor made for a protest party like SF. Mid-term, hugely unpopular government - just the sort of situation where Sinn Féin could and should profit. What happened? They hit the buffers, that’s what. Their share of first preferences was almost identical to 2004, they made no gains in council seats, and failed to win any European seat. The party brass will have to look closely at what happened, particularly in Dublin. They lost four council seats in the capital and their golden girl Mary Lou McDonald lost her European seat. If she had lost the seat to Eoin Ryan, that could be explained away by the fact that Dublin had gone from four seats to three, but they both lost out to Joe Higgins. SF should have been able to mop up the disaffected voters in Dublin, especially those from the left, but instead these voters put their trust in Labour, the Socialist Party and the Ideology Before Reality Alliance. Add to the fact that SF lost a TD in 2007, and this is a party that is going nowhere fast.
So overall, it was a satisfactory result, especially in the Euros. Only one anti-Lisbon candidate got elected MEP, and the two that were there both lost out. By and large, we have a group of MEPs that are actually interested in representing our interests in Europe, and are supporters of the European ideal.
Contrast this to the UK, from where 13 UKIP and two British National Party MEPs will soon be booking their flights to Strasbourg.
At least we haven’t got that to contend with.