Adrian Kavanagh, 26th November 2024

What are the most “competitive” constituencies at General Election 2024? There are different ways of thinking about this, but most of these are largely opinion-based and not quantifiable. In this article, I have tried to devise a more “objective” way of determining the relative competitiveness levels of different constituencies and ultimately a constituency’s overall ranking is simply based on how “the numbers fall” and not my own opinion.

In an effort to be as objective as possible here and to see where constituencies fall once the numbers are added up, I have devised a measure that is based on the level of electoral experience that a range of candidates have in a constituency, while relating this back to the number of seats in that constituency. A constituency’s ranking is based, in part, on the number of incumbents/Dáil deputies that are contesting the general election in that constituency, but it is also based on the number of Senators and County/City Councillors that are contesting that constituency also, but with a much greater weighting being given to the number of Dail deputies relative to these. The competitiveness score also takes account of candidates who do not currently hold electoral office, but did hold electoral office in the past, although the weighting given to such candidates is not as high as it would be for those who do currently hold electoral office. Finally, the score also factors in the number of former Dail deputies that might be contesting that constituency. The Kavanagh Constituency Competitiveness Score (KCC Score), hence, is largely shaped by the degree of experience that candidates have in terms of winning past elections, but also the experiences they have gained from their positions as current/past public representatives.

Why focus on this? Well, past experience shows that incumbents do have a significant advantage when it comes to contesting elections. While some incumbents will always lose at an election, they, on average, have a better chance of winning a seat than other candidates do. Over three quarter of the Dáil deputies (75.4%) who contested the 2020 General Election won seats, as opposed to 37.5% of Senator candidates and 24.4% of County/City Councillor candidates. 31.8% of former Dáil deputy candidates successfully navigated a return to the Dáil, as well as a very high percentage of former County/City Councillors (62.5%, which did reflect the impact of the Sinn Féin surge in that election. By contrast, only five of the successful candidates (and just 1.5% of the total number of candidates in this group) had not previously held electoral office (and two of these had contested previous Dáil elections and another one had contested the 2019 County Council elections). So, it is obvious that candidates have a much better chance of success if they have previously successfully contested an election campaign and are holding, or have held, electoral office.

The measure is not as nuanced as it might be if I had a bit more time to work on this (hey, I’ve a stack of marking the size of a pile of non-transferable votes waiting for me on my desk), but there is some degree (!) of science behind the KCC score measure and it does hopefully pinpoint constituencies that are especially competitive due to the high number of experienced politicians contesting these (for instance, Wicklow, in which five incumbents are contesting four seats, in addition to other candidates) and those constituencies in which “opportunity spaces” might open up for new candidates, in part because there are few (or none, in the case of Wicklow-Wexford) incumbents contesting these.

The ranking suggests that Kildare South will be the most competitive constituency for the upcoming general election. The effective seat reduction, due to the automatic re-election of the Ceann Comhairle, does play a role here, but the constituency is also being contested by all three of the other incumbents, two Senators (one of whom is a former Dail deputy) and three County Councillors. The next highest ranked constituency is probably no surprise here given that the boundary changes, arising from the 2023 Electoral Commission report, have left five sitting Dáil deputies contesting a constituency which now has only four seats, with four County Councillors, one of whom is a former Dáil deputy, also contesting the Wicklow constituency. Sligo-Leitrim edges onto the KCC score podium, just narrowly ahead of Dublin South-Central and Limerick City. Even though one of the current Sligo-Leitrim Dáil deputies will not be contesting the upcoming election, the other three incumbents are running, as well as a large number (7) of County Councillors and one former Dáil deputy and also a former MEP. There is also a relatively high number of City Councillors (6) contesting Dublin South-Central, which would be the most competitive constituency in Dublin based on the KCC score metric, in addition to three of the constituency’s four outgoing Dail deputies and two Senators. With all four incumbents contesting Limerick City, in addition to two Senators and four City/County Councillors, again it is not surprising why this constituency ranks highly in terms of the KCC score.

At the other end of the scale, the constituency with the lowest KCC score (by some distance) is the new Wicklow-Wexford constituency. Again, this is perhaps not a major surprise. The boundary changes in the 2023 Electoral Commission report left all the outgoing Dáil deputies in the old Wicklow and Wexford five-seaters in the territories of the new Wicklow and Wexford four-seat constituencies, and Wicklow-Wexford will be the only constituency at the 2024 General Election that will not be contested by at least one incumbent. This effectively leaves Senator Malcolm Byrne (who briefly held a Dail seat between the 2019 Wexford Dáil by-election and the 2020 General Election) as the most senior politician in this contest, with it being also contested by two County Councillors. The Laois and Galway East constituencies are the next lowest in the competitiveness ranking based on the KCC scores. Laois will be contested by two incumbents (the other Laois-based incumbent is retiring) and two County Councillors. Galway East is also being contested by two incumbents (the other Galway East incumbent is retiring) and four County Councillors, but it has gained an extra seat for this election, which does open up more of an opportunity space for prospective new candidates.