Barry Whyte

While things might be moving pretty slowly in Galway, they're moving pretty quickly here in the RDS at the Dublin Central account.

We're now getting a very clear picture of who could win this by-election with almost all ballot boxes opened and tallied.

In fact, they're all opened and tallied now.

I'm just checking updates on my phone from the tally people.

So as always with the tallies, Pat, there's a health warning.

They're not official results and won't be perfectly precise.

But there is a very strong tallying operation in place here, like I said earlier, with all the parties working together.

So confidence is relatively high in these numbers.

So with 100% of boxes now tallied, this is how things stand.

Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats on 19.5%.

Janice Boylan of Sinn Féin on 17.8%.

Gerry Hutch on 11.5%.

Janet Horner of the Greens on 11.4%.

Ray McAdam of Fine Gael on 10.6%.

Maliki Steenson on 9.5%, Ona Canavan of People Before Profit on 6.7%, Ruth O'Dea of Labour on 5.8%, John Stevens of Fianna Fáil on 4.2%.

So Pat, the key takeaway at this stage is that Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats appears to have a narrow lead over Sinn Féin's Janice Boylan, with this increasingly looking like a two-candidate race between the pair.

Another major factor will be transfers.

Both the Greens and People Before Profit are pulling slightly ahead of expectations and their transfers are likely to favour the left-leaning candidates, particularly Ennis and Boylan, which could prove crucial in the later counts.

At this point, Daniel Ennis looks to be in pole position.

Only around 500 votes appear to separate Daniel Ennis and Janice Boylan.