Adrian Kavanagh, 29th May 2014
As an electoral geographer, I am very interested in which local newspapers are publishing local election tallies in this week’s editions, or possibly in the following few weeks’ editions. When I refer to tallies/tally sheets I am of course not referring to election results or count details, but instead referring to documents that can show the number of votes each candidate won in each polling box in a constituency or electoral area. These can give a very accurate sense then as to the geography of a party/candidates’s votes within a particular constituency. These are the very lifeblood of Irish electoral geography. Here are the newspapers that I have come across so far – note that I am only including those newspapers that I have personally seen here…seeing is believing and all that…)
Appearing in local newspapers in the week after the Local and European elections:
* Donegal News (Monday edition)
* Clare People (single issues can be bought online)
* The Clare Champion (single issues can be bought online)
* Kerry’s Eye (single issues can be bought online)
* Galway City Tribune
* Roscommon Herald
* Western People
* Westmeath Examiner (by-election and local election tallies, but only for the Mullingar electoral areas)
* The Connaught Telegraph
* Longford Leader
* Leitrim Observer (also has European election tallies for Leitrim county)
* Western People
* The Mayo News
The word on the street is that other papers such as The Roscommon People or The Mullingar Topic were also all tallied up this week, but I haven’t come across those newspapers yet.
Local newspapers that did not have tallies published in them included: Nenagh Guardian, Leinster Leader, Laois Nationalist, Wexford People, Bray People, The Liffey Champion, Carlow Nationalist, Kildare Nationalist, Wexford People, Tipperary Star, Leinster Express, Meath Chronicle, Kilkenny People, The Limerick Leader, The Corkman, Munster Express, The Argus, The Drogheda Independent.
Most of the usual suspects were here in terms of local tally publishing. As you might appreciate, there is a geography here with papers based in the West, North West and North Midlands usually being the best in this regard.
As noted by Colm Gannon on the Twitter, Mayo Fine Gael did an excellent job in providing regular online updates of tally information for the four electoral areas in that county and that information is still available in Google Docs format here.
I am a bit disappointed with the Sligo papers not coming up trumps (so far) however, although the Western People did publish the Ballymote-Tubbercurry tallies and (as noted by Jonathan Davey) the Ocean FM has done an excellent job in collating tallies for the two Sligo electoral areas – here are the links for the Ballymote-Tubbercurry and Sligo electoral areas.
I still had hopes that some other papers that did not have tally figures in them this week (maybe the Limerick Leader, Wexford People or Kilkenny People or Munster Express) will come good in the following week…
The tally hunt continued! Tally Ho!
One week later…
Er. No further cases of local newspapers publishing tally figures for the elections. The tally hunt endeth. Tally Ho? No.
Irish Elections: Geography, Facts and Analyses 
all Sligo county council election results for election 14 are given on this weeks Sligo Weekender
But these are not tallies sadly…
The Donegal Democrat can be added to the list, and (I think) the Clare Champion.
The Westmeath Examiner has tallies for the Dáil by-election in the Mullingar electoral areas of the constituency. The Mullingar Topic has by-election tallies for all the EAs but no further detail.
Yes, The Clare Champion did indeed come up with the goods and has been added to the list above, I haven’t come across Donegal Democrat or Mullingar Topic
Adrian, the Liffey Champion had live updates on the tallies in both Citywest and Punchestown on their Facebook page. Both counts were covered in depth in the newspaper. Disappointed at your error.
Excuse me you are off the mark here, this post has nothing at all to do with which papers that were covering the “counts in depth” – all the local papers did this – but instead to do with papers that printed/published all the box-by-box tally figures for different electoral areas in their local area in their paper (NOT NOT NOT election count details, as is clearly stated in this post).