Blast From The Past….
The Fine Gael vote in Cavan in 2002 – as can be seen their vote was strongest between Baileborough and Cavan town. Despite their two Cavan candidates polling over 9,500 votes between them compared to 6,113 for Monaghan-based Seymour Crawford, Crawford edged out Andrew Boylan by 121 votes on the last count.
Part of Crawford’s success can be in part put down to the fact that nearly 20% of his votes came from Cavan – he polled particularly well in areas …with high proportions of his Protestant co-religionists. And it can also be in part put down to the fact that when Paddy O’Reilly was eliminated on the penultimate count, Crawford took nearly 1500 (or just over a quarter) of his transfers – leaving Andrew Boylan short by 121 votes.
The fact that O’Reilly was based in East Cavan and Boylan in West Cavan may have contributed to the last seat going to a Monaghan TD rather than a Cavan one. Being based in East Cavan, he was geographically “in between” Crawford and Boylan, whereas – if O’Reilly had been ahead of Boylan (he was only 195 votes behind on elimination), it is highly likely that Crawford would have not received the same level of transfers that enabled him to stay ahead of his Cavan running-mate. .