By-election update: What’s the latest?
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What updates are there on the Galway West by-election count?
Time to get an update on those two by-elections.
We'll go to the Galway West Count first of all. Emily Keegan is at the tennis club in Salt Hill. Emily, good morning again.
Good morning, Pat. Things moving pretty slowly still here in Galway West. We currently have 42% of boxes tallied and we still have the main three front runners that we've had all morning. So we have Fine Gael's Sean Cain and Independent Ireland's Noel Thomas basically neck and neck with Noel Thomas at 20% and Sean Cain just ahead of him on 21%. Labour then is taking up the third spot with Helen Ogbue on 12%. Now, she was kind of a bit closer to the two men when we were just counting the Galway City boxes, but since we've moved into the county boxes and headed out towards Connemara, we've seen that she's kind of struggled to keep up with them as much, but still holding on to that third place very solidly here.
OK, Emily, thank you very much. We'll go to Barry White now, who's at Simmons Court in the RDS in Dublin to look at the Dublin Central tallies. Have we all the boxes open yet, Barry? Hi, Pat.
Who are the front runners in the Galway West election?
Good morning.
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. However, a number of experienced Tally people are calling the seat for Ennis based on the transfer patterns they are seeing. Meanwhile, they say the most closely watched transfers as the day goes on will be those of Gerry Hutch. But I do not think there will be enough of these to pull the Sinn Féin candidate ahead of the Social Democrats. So with 100% of tallies complete, Pat, Daniel Ennis looks to be in poor position to take the Dublin central by-election.
Very good, Barry White, our chief reporter down at that count. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm joined by Gary Gannon at the Sittings Social Democrat TD for the area on the line. Gary, good morning. Good morning, Paul. How are you? Are you counting your chickens?
No, we're not counting our chickens at all. But we are absolutely delighted with the tally and the outcome of what was the tally and putting us in first place on first preferences. I mean, that's a big endorsement of the type of politics the Social Democrats have stood over. And it's a big endorsement of the type of campaign that Daniel has ran. It's one that's stood true to authenticity, values, and people have bought into that. And we are genuinely delighted.
OK, now you will still, of course, need transfers to get over the line. Where are you seeing those coming from?
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