Adrian Kavanagh, 19th February 2016

The Department of Environment has now made available electorate figures for all of the 40 Dail constituencies being contested in next Friday’s (26th February) general election contest. As these stand, numbers on the supplementary register have not been added in to these figures (meaning that electorate sizes will actually be larger on election day). Applying the 2011 General Election voter turnout figures for those constituencies to these numbers, it is possible to get an estimate of the total poll/number of voters in these constituencies and hence get an estimate of the likely size of the quotas in these constituencies.

The approach of applying turnout statistics used here is not especially fine-tuned and cannot/does not take account of territory transfers between counties, in the absence of more finely detailed turnout statistics below the constituency level for the 2011 election. Note that in cases where a new constituency has been formed out of two older constituencies (as with Tipperary, Kerry, Donegal and Dublin Bay North) that the turnout figures used here involves an averaging out of the turnout levels across those two constituencies. The official Laois-Offaly voter turnout figure is applied in the case of both the new constituencies of Laois and Offaly, by contrast.

 Table 1: Electorate size details for Dail constituencies, in addition to estimated total poll and estimated quota size statistics 

Looking at the details included in Table 1, it can be seen that the constituency that is likely to have the largest quota, by some distance, in this election is Dun Laoghaire, where there is likely to be a quota of more than 16,000 votes. The potential size of this quota reflects the relatively high proportion of Dail electors relative to population within that constituency and its relatively healthy voter turnout level at Dail elections, but also reflects the fact that this four-seat constituency becomes effectively a three-seat constituency in this election due to the automatic re-election of the Ceann Comhairle, Deputy Sean Barrett.

If the constituency voter turnout figures for the 2016 General Election tend to be higher, or lower, than the 2011 figures applied here, then the estimated quota levels for those constituencies will have been, in turn, under-estimated, or over-estimated.

The other constituencies with high estimated quota levels all tend to be high turnout rural constituencies  – all of which would have a relatively high proportion of Dail electors relative to their populations also – including Tipperary, Kerry, Mayo, Sligo-Leitrim and Cavan-Monaghan.

By contrast, the constituency with the lowest estimated quota level in Dublin Central, with the estimate here being nearly 10,000 votes lowest than the estimate for Dun Laoghaire. The small size of the quota here reflects the generally low voter turnout levels associated with this constituency for Dail elections (and the moving out of a number of the highest turnout levels in the old Dublin Central by the 2012 Constituency Commission report is likely to push down the (percentage) Dublin Central turnout level even further). But it also reflects the fact that proportion of Dail electors relative to the population size tends to be lower than for most other constituencies. This may reflect the high level of non-Irish/UK citizens living within this constituency – particularly within the North Inner City area – but also the high levels of residential mobility that are evident within this constituency, meaning that many (usually younger) residents may not be on the electoral register. (Or if they are on the electoral register, they are on the register instead for their “home” constituencies – which is usually somewhere “down the country”.)  These same factors also apply in the case of the other constituencies with much lower than average quota levels – Dublin Bay South, Dublin West, Dublin Mid-West and Dublin South-Central.

As noted above, Table 1 does not include supplementary voter figures/details, but where these are available, these will be factored into the amended version of this table, as shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Electorate size details for Dail constituencies (including supplementary voter numbers, where these are available, in addition to estimated total poll and estimated quota size statistics 

Where figures have been amended to take account of supplementary voter levels, these are highlighted by italics in Table 2 above.

At this point, supplementary voter numbers have only been factored in for parts of the North Midlands/North West constituencies, based on supplementary voter figures for Leitrim, Roscommon and Longford, as reported on the Shannonside Radio webpage (19th February 2016).

The constituencies with the lowest estimated quota levels are probably all likely to have high numbers of voters on the supplement the electoral register, meaning that the gap between these and the constituencies with the highest estimated quota levels will not be as wide, once the supplementary figures are factored in.