Chapter 1: 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.
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Chapter 2: 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?
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Chapter 3: What is the current status of the Dublin Central by-election?
But I've known him kind of through his role as an adult in terms of working with Eastwall Besbra as the chairperson of that club. Look, when all of the issues happened down in Eastwall with protests, and it would have been on your own shows talking about that, Daniel was a real leader down there in terms of trying to unite a community and bring it together.
And that was the point where I actually asked him to get involved politically. He was campaigning to get a
a pitch redeveloped down the Alfie Bourne Road and I remember just saying to him down there when he was asking me for support I was like why don't you do it yourself why don't you get involved become a councillor in the council elections in a year's time and you know it was the first time I think anyone had ever said that to him and that was nearly three years ago and you know every day almost every day since we've been working closely together just around helping people in the north inner city in Dublin central and Daniel has just blown me away in terms of how he's taken to politics because
I mean, the last couple of weeks have been tough, but I mean, the guy and his authenticity just shone through. Did he blow you away on the football pitch? This is a big debate in the office.
Chapter 4: How does the tallying process work in Dublin Central?
I know, though, I will say is Daniel had a better touch and nicer football boots, but I was a bit more rugged. OK.
All right, Gary, thank you very much. We'll keep an eye on the count as the day progresses. With me in studio, Newstalk's political correspondent, Sean Defoe. Sean, everyone's calling it for Daniel, really? Really? Tentatively, but still.
Tentatively, because you never quite know what transfers, but I think he's going to be the new TD and he's going to make the Social Democrats the fourth biggest party in the Dáil. Looks as though, I mean, they're much more transfer friendly. If you look at, say, PBP at the last election, I think 60% of their transfers went to the Social Democrats over other parties.
Interesting in there as well, my tally figures, just slightly different to Barry's, have the Greens just ahead of Gerry Hutch after 100%. It's basically neck and neck, which is a surprise and a big boost
for them as well as a knock on Hutch so that's kind of an interesting one to see where he lands his vote down slightly on 2024 Malachy Steenson's up so I suppose that protest vote going one way instead of another it'll all shake out at him probably coming third maybe Now what about the Galway West situation is still nip and tuck there? Nip and tuck. Difficult to call.
I mean, nearly half a box is open there now. And actually Noel Thomas of Independent Ireland has just nipped ahead of Sean Cain. So 21% to 20%. I think ultimately Cain will prove more transfer friendly. But it's still a long way from 20% to 50%. And it's hard to know where a government candidate is going to get all those votes.
Helen Ogbue dropping back to eleven point six, an even longer journey from there to 50 percent. So this is going to be a very long count from what I've seen of tallies in the city, even votes that are going one, two left. Sean Cain is picking up some threes and four. So I would still tentatively call it for him. But, you know, I wouldn't wouldn't put the house on it.
And do you know what the key issue was in that campaign for all of the candidates?
It was quite split. I mean, people would have thought immigration, and from what I heard, immigration didn't come up massively. There was a little bit of the protest, obviously, over fuel, but a lot of it was local issues. It was the infrastructure, it was the roads, it was the Ring Road and Galway, the so-called Gluis as well, housing. They were kind of the two big dominant issues.
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