Donegal South West in maps

Posted on October 29, 2019 by

Given that a series of by-elections are scheduled to take place at the end of November, probably only a few months ahead of a general election contest, this old Adrian Kavanagh post on the politicalreform.ie website might be of some interest, given the parallels that might exist between the 2010 contest in Donegal South-West and the upcoming by-election contests.

Irish Politics Forum

Pearse Doherty support by ED in Donegal South West, 2007 General Election

Adrian Kavanagh, 17 November 2010

Red C opinion poll figures for the Donegal South West by-election and the subsequent general election in that constituency provide ill tidings for Fianna Fail but offer very good news for Sinn Fein and Labour in that constituency.  But past electoral trends suggest that geographical factors/local voting trends will also need to be taken account of here. This post will look especially at geographical voting trends for the last general election in this constituency, based on an analysis and mapping of tally figures for that election. It suggests that the final result can be predicted based on early tallies by knowing the geography of voting in this constituency.

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Donegal South West by election: The numbers…

Posted on October 29, 2019 by

Given that a series of by-elections are scheduled to take place at the end of November, probably only a few months ahead of a general election contest, this old Adrian Kavanagh post on the politicalreform.ie website might be of some interest, given the parallels that might exist between the 2010 contest in Donegal South-West and the upcoming by-election contests.

Irish Politics Forum

Adrian Kavanagh, 5 November 2010

On the basis of the most recent general election results in Donegal South West, this might be expected to be one constituency where Fianna Fail could actually have a realistic chance of winning a by-election (thus becoming the first government party to do so since Noel Treacy won the Galway East by-election in 1982), but a study of local election result trends in the three electoral areas that this Dail constituency is comprised of – Donegal (Town), Glenties and Stranorlar – offers a more sobering portrait for Fianna Fail and offers Fine Gael hope that they could be the party to win this by-election, thus offering prospects of yet another electoral success in western Ireland for the “Kenny Krusade”.

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Candidates for the 2019 Dáil By-Elections: An Overview

Posted on September 12, 2019 by

Adrian Kavanagh, 12th September 2019

In the May 2019 European Elections Deputies Clare Daly and Frances Fitzgerald won seats in the Dublin constituency, while Deputies Mick Wallace and Billy Kelleher won seats in the South constituency. This means that their seats in the Dublin Fingal, Dublin Mid-West, Wexford and Cork North-Central Dáil constituencies are now vacant and would need to be filled by a by-election in each of these constituencies before the end of the year, unless a General Election was called in the intervening period. On 7th November 2019 it was announced that these by-election contests would take place on Friday 29th November 2019.

In this post, I will be detailing the names of the candidates who have been selected to contest the Dáil by-elections in these constituencies

Currently there are forty six candidates listed here – fifteen are female (32.6%) and thirty one are male (67.4%). This list includes three Senators (6.5%) and nineteen City/County Councillors (41.3%), including three former Dáil deputies.

As of now, there are 13 candidates listed here as contesting the Dublin Mid-West constituency, with 12 candidates listed as contesting Cork North-Central, 12 candidates listed as contesting Dublin Fingal and 9 candidates listed as contesting Wexford.

As and when new candidates are confirmed between now and these elections – and as soon as possible after I become aware of this information – I will be updating this post to include their names.

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City and County Council Members – Co-options and Changes since the 2019 Local Elections

Posted on September 2, 2019 by

Adrian Kavanagh, 2nd September 2019 (with subsequent updates)

The 2019 Local Elections resulted in the election of 949 City and County Councillors. Since that election took place on 24th May 2019, I have estimated that 13 of the successful candidates in these elections (1.26% of the total number) have either stood down, been “promoted”. or have sadly passed away. 

10 of the former Councillors in this group are male (76.9%) and 3 are female (23.1%).

As Table 1 shows, 4 (40.0%) of the co-options/new Councillors are male, while 7 are female (60.0%). This means that the total number of female City and County Councillors has increased slightly (relative to the number of female candidates elected at the May 2019 elections) from 226 (23.8% of total number of Councillors at that point) to 230 (24.3% of total number of Councillors as of now).

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The 2019 Local Elections: A Geographer’s Overview

Posted on May 28, 2019 by

Adrian Kavanagh, 28th March 2019

The 2019 City and County Council elections took place on 28th May 2019.

Perhaps the most notable trend at this election was to do with voter turnout. The average turnout level for the 2019 Local Elections is estimated to stand at 49.7%. This means that more than half the of the registered electorate did not turn out to vote in a local election contest for first time in the State’s history. To me, that’s a disaster. Furthermore, there seems to have been a notable drop in turnout levels, over and above the national average level of decline, in some working class areas, resulting in some very low turnout levels in electoral areas such as Tallaght South (26.9%), where barely over a quarter of the people, who were on the electoral register, turned out to vote.

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Friday’s Elections: Why Voting Matters

Posted on May 23, 2019 by

Adrian Kavanagh, 23rd May 2019

This year, local, European and referendum elections are taking place on Friday 24th May (TOMORROW!!!), while voters in Cork City, Waterford and Limerick also get to vote on a plebiscite on whether they will have a directly elected mayor for those local authorities. The results of these contests will be determined by many factors – some of these being local, some being national and some even having a European focus – but voter turnout levels on the day will also have a major bearing. Voting matters and – in this post – I will discuss why.

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Local Elections 2019: What is the Most Competitive Constituency?

Posted on May 23, 2019 by

Adrian Kavanagh, 23rd May 2019

Before I get (possibly deserved) flak from people who are fighting tooth and nail for seats in constituencies that are deemed as “less competitive” here, please (i) accept my apologies in advance, (ii) note that this is a simple number crunch, which cannot capture the realities of the ground game in different electoral areas – something that only politicians/voters in those electoral areas will know much about!

What is the most competitive local election constituency in the state, looking ahead to tomorrow’s local election contests? This post will attempt to offer a “rough” estimate of constituency competitiveness and – in order to do so – will involve the creation of an index – the Kavanagh Constituency Competitiveness Factor (KCCF) – which will allow for a potential ranking of electoral areas based on their individual scores.   

There are various ways that the relative competitiveness of a constituency can be measured, as will be discussed in this post.

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