Donegal South West in maps

Posted on October 29, 2019 by Adrian Kavanagh

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 Adrian Kavanagh

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

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

Adrian Kavanagh, 2nd September 2019 (with subsequent updates – latest update: Wednesday 15th May 2024)

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 at least 132 of the successful candidates in these elections (13.91% of the total number) have either stood down, been “promoted”, or have sadly passed away. 

Moreover, at least sixteen of the new Councillors co-opted to replace these Councillors have themselves resigned from their new role, bringing the total number of City/County Councllors who have either stood down, been “promoted”, or have sadly passed away, up to 148 (15.60% of the total number).

92 of the former Councillors in this group are male (62.2%) and 56 are female (37.8%).

70 (48.3%) of the co-options/new Councillors are male, while 75 are female (51.7%).

This means that the total number of female City and County Councillors has increased notably (relative to the number of female candidates elected at the May 2019 elections); going from 226 (23.8% of total number of Councillors elected at the 2019 Local Elections) to 245 (25.87% of the total number of City/County Councillors, at this point).

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The 2019 Local Elections: A Geographer’s Overview

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Adrian Kavanagh

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

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

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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Links to 2019 Local Elections Candidate Selection pages on this Website

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Adrian Kavanagh

Adrian Kavanagh, 21st May 2019

To make it easier for readers to access all the pages relating to candidate selections for the (upcoming) 2019 City and County Council elections quickly, I will list all the relevant pages in this posts.

NB: If you do use this website/any of these pages to gain information for your work (e.g. media reports/newspaper articles, academic research…) please make sure to cite/reference this site. The information gathered on these page has taken a lot of time to do (over thirteen months work) on my part.

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Political Reform in Ireland: My Personal Electoral and Political Reform Agenda

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Adrian Kavanagh

Adrian Kavanagh, 20th May 2019

As we approach the upcoming local, European and referendum elections on May 24th and as this is “Elections Week” for the Geographical Society of Ireland’s Year of Geography series, I have decided to mark both these events by (again) revisiting my earlier post on what I would consider my political reform priorities to be.

In my opinion, Ireland’s record on political reform very much amounts to a case of “something done but a lot more to be do”, which is rather disappointing given that there was a significant opportunity space in play to bring in political reform measures in the wake of the Economic Recession in the late 2000s. The perception, to a large degree, is that much of the reform effort across the 2010s has been driven by the belief that the Irish people had a very negative opinion of politics and that the main thing they really wanted to see changed in Irish politics was a significant overall reduction in politician numbers. However, the experience of the past few years has shown that while people may like the idea of fewer politicians in theory, they are less enthusiastic when faced with the practicalities of this. This was seen in the rejection of the Seanad Referendum in October 2013 and negative reactions to the abolition of Town/Borough Councils and the reduction in County Councillor numbers in rural areas ahead of the 2014 Local Elections.

Ultimately my sense is that more democracy – assuming that cost/benefit concerns are addressed and that real power invested at all levels, local as well as national – is better than less democracy.

My approach in terms of what I stress in terms of a political reform agenda is to be as pragmatic as popular and avoid populist and knee-jerk approaches to these issues. Reflecting the 5 C’s that act as barriers against female participation in electoral politics, I should we can talk about a different cohort of 5 C’s – the 5 C’s, or principles, that should shape all political reform processes.

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Local Election pages on different County/City Council websites

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Adrian Kavanagh

Adrian Kavanagh, 29th April 2019

This page/post aims to identify/provide links to webpages on different City Council and County Council websites, which provide useful information relevant to the upcoming Local Elections.

The level/range of information provided by these webpages seems to vary quite dramatically. Most, as of now, do seem to include “guides on postering” details, as well as details on how candidates can get nominated, but little more in some cases (where there is especially useful extra information/resources provided by a site/webpage, I’ll note this below). It is probably still very much early days (late April 2019), as of now, so the level on information on these webpages/websites is likely to increase over the coming weeks.

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