Adrian Kavanagh, 18th June 2013
There currently are 223 councillors in the nine local authorities located within the Connacht-Ulster region. The number of County Councillors in some of these local authorities will increase at the next local elections but numbers in most counties in Connacht and Ulster will fall to a notable degree. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 14th June 2013
There currently are 262 councillors in the eleven local authorities located within the Leinster region. The number of CountyCouncillors in some of these counties will increase at the next local elections but numbers in other Leinster counties are posed to drop by a very notable degree. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 14th June 2013 (with updates added in light of co-options, retirements and other changes to personnel here.)
The previous post offered a general overview of the 130 sitting councillors in the Dublin region, but this post will look at these in greater detail and attempt to match these councillors to the local electoral areas that they would seem most likely to be contesting in next year’s local elections. As stated in the previous post, the Dublin local authorities have all been awarded extra seats in the latest boundary revisions. But the nature of the boundary changes does determine that there are going to be some constituencies that are likely to be highly competitive due to the number of incumbents that are likely to be contesting these in 2014. Other areas could well offer good prospects for potential candidates in terms of a more limited level of competition from experienced incumbents (though, presumably, not from other candidates). Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 13 June 2013
There currently are 130 councillors in the four different local authorities covering the Dublin region, with Dublin City (52 councillors) being the largest of these followed by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown (28), South Dublin (26) and Fingal (24). The number of councillors in this region will increase significantly at the next local elections, with the number of councillors increasing by 16 in Fingal (a 67% increase), 14 in South Dublin (54%), 12 in Dun Laoghaire (43%) and 11 in Dublin City (21%) – see Figure 1. This notable increase in overall councillor numbers (53) in the Dublin region does offer a “political opportunity space” here to allow different candidates and political parties to make notable gains at the 2014 local elections, although some parties will be better placed to make gains than others due to changing support trends and the tendency (as in the second-order election model) for government parties to do less well in such mid-term contests. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 13th June 2013 – with updates as convention/candidate selection process proceeded (see the bottom of the post). Final update posted on 16th June 2014.
69 members of the Fianna Fail Local Area Representatives group contested the 2014 Local Elections, with most of these contesting electoral areas in the more urban parts of the state (as detailed later in this post). Slightly more than half of these failed to win seats in these elections, with 29 Fianna Fail LARs (49.2% of these) winning seats while 30 Fianna Fail LARs (50.8%) lost out in these elections. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 30th May 2013
Thursday 30th May 2013 saw the publication of the Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee Report 2013, which outlines the constituency boundaries for next year’s local elections (May 2014). The committee faced a very difficult task, in fairness, given that the levels of change being determined by the terms of reference would probably amount to the most dramatic redrawal of local election constituency boundaries in the history of the State. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 22nd March 2013
Voter turnout levels in general elections in the Republic of Ireland, as in most other democracies tend to be higher than those in other types of elections, such as referendum elections, presidential elections and local elections. The same also applies in the case of Dail by-elections; as Figure 1 shows turnout levels for by-elections held during the 1990s and 2000s in the constituencies concerned are consistently lower than those for the same constituencies in the general elections held prior to those contests.
Figure 1: Voter turnout levels by constituency for all by-elections held between 1994 and 2011 and turnout levels for the general elections preceding these
Turnout levels across the nineteen by-election contests held to date during the 1990s and 2000s have averaged out at 50.5%. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, 12th/13th March 2013
With Croatia about to become the newest member of the European Union in the coming months and with this state likely to be assigned 11/12 seats in the next European Parliament, theEuropean Union has voted to reapportion European Parliament seats between its different member states to take account of this and the Republic of Ireland is to lose one of its 12 seats in the European parliament. A new boundary review will need to be carried out to redraw the European election constituency boundaries in line with this ahead of next year’s European elections. But what shape might these new boundaries take?
Adrian Kavanagh, March 6th 2013
What do Tomas MacGiolla, Dick Roche, Joe Higgins, Brian Hayes and Paul Gogarty all have in common? All of these candidates lost in by-election contests – MacGiolla (Dublin West 1982), Roche (Wicklow 1995), Higgins (Dublin West 1996), Hayes (Dublin South Central 1994) and Gogarty (Dublin West 1996). But they all went on to win seats in subsquent general election contests – MacGiolla (Dublin West November 1982), Roche (Wicklow 1997), Higgins (Dublin West 1997) – and in some cases won these in different constituencies, namely Hayes (Dublin South-West 1997) and Gogarty (Dublin Mid-West 2002). Indeed, over the past thirty years and twenty-five different by-elections, a total of 28 candidates have lost by-elections but went on win seats in subsequent general elections. Continue reading
Adrian Kavanagh, March 6th 2013 – updated March 28th 2013
228 candidates have contested the 26 different by-election contests that took place over the past three decades (between 1980 and 2011), although this number does take account of candidates (such as Jim Tallon who has to date contested nine different by-election contests) who contested in different by-elections on multiple occasions. 40 female candidates have contested these different by-election election contests, meaning that females have accounted for 17.5% of all by-election candidacies over the past three decades. In total, female candidates have won 207.776 first preference votes in these contests (22.2% of all votes cast) and won the by-election contests on eightdifferent occasions (32% of all contests).
Irish Elections: Geography, Facts and Analyses 