This post will look at some of the quirky and unusual results that have been thrown up by our PR-STV system.
Galway South was a new constituency, created by the division of the four seat Galway East into two new three seaters, Galway North and Galway South. Of the four Galway East TDs, two – Patrick Beegan and Frank Fahy (the Ceann Comhairle) opted to run in the new Galway South. Both were Fianna Fáil. The other two TDs (John Donnellan of Clann Na Talmhan and Mark Killilea of Fianna Fáil opted to run in Galway North
The advent of Clann Na Talmhan in the 1943 General Election had decimated Fine Gael support – they went from taking 30% and a seat in 1938 to only 8% in 1943. In 1944 they didn’t even contest the constituency.
The constituency revision in 1948 gave them some hope for regaining a seat as Galway South was much less fertile ground for Clann Na Talmhan than Galway North (The contiguous areas of North Galway, East Mayo and Roscommon the heartland of Clann Na Talmhan which sustained their presence at both local and National level into the 1960s).
In 1948, Fianna Fáil had been in power for sixteen years – the second half of which had paid host to the deprivations resulting from the second world war and its aftermath. Their vote fell from 49% to 42%. However in Galway South they still took 64.3% of the vote – nearly two quotas.
The field was made up of only six candidates – three Fianna Fáil, two Clann Na Poblachta and one Fine Gael. As noted above, Clann Na Talmhan’s strength was concentrated in north-east Galway and they didn’t even field a candidate here.
The Fine Gael candidate was Patrick Cawley, who was attempting to get into the Dáil for the fifth time (He eventually made it in 1951 only to be defeated by running-mate Brendan Glynn in 1954.
Below are details of the count…
| PARTY | NAME | % | C1 | C2 | C3 | C4 |
| Fianna Fáil | Frank Fahy | |||||
| Fianna Fáil | Patrick Beegan | 48.4 | 11,080 | |||
| Fine Gael | Patrick Cawley | 17.0 | 3,886 | +262 4,248 | +95 4,343 | +1,726 6,069 |
| Fianna Fáil | Robert Lahiffe | 15.9 | 3,651 | +2,898 6,549 | +39 6,588 | +305 6,893 |
| Clann na Poblachta | Vincent Shields | 13.9 | 3,176 | +126 3,302 | +964 4,266 | |
| Clann na Poblachta | Martin Newell | 4.8 | 1,108 | +60 1,168 |
On the first count, Fianna Fáil had 14,731 votes – just 537 votes short of two quotas. Clann Na Poblachta actually had more votes (4,284) on the first count than Fine Gael (3,886) but they were split between two candidates. This was part of an overall pattern concerning Clann Na Poblachta in 1948, where they ran too many candidates winning only 10 of the 147 seats (6.8%) despite taking 13.2% of the vote.
| COUNT | PARTY | TYPE | F.F. | F.G. | C.N.P. | Non-Transferable |
| 2 | F.F. | 1st Count Surplus | 84.1% | 7.6% | 5.4% | 2.9% |
| 3 | C.N.P | Elimination | 3.3% | 7.1% | 82.5% | 7.1% |
| 4 | C.N.P | Elimination | 7.1% | 40.5% | 52.4% |
On the 2nd count, over 84% of Patrick Beegan’s surplus went to his running-mate Robert Lahiffe on 6,549 votes – some 1,085 votes short of the quota. Interesting 262 votes went to Fine Gael – 76 more than went to the two Clann Na Poblachta candidates.
Going into the third count, the combined vote of the Clann Na Poblachta candidates was still 222 votes ahead of the vote of the Fine Gael candidate. However 134 votes leaked to other parties and 70 were non-transferable leaving the remaining Clann Na Poblachta candidate Shields just 77 votes behind Fine Gael’s Cawley.
Going into the final count, the combined votes of the Fine Gael and Clann na Poblachta candidates were just over two thousand votes ahead of Lahiffe. Shields’s transferable votes went over 6 to 1 in favour of Cawley – but less than half of his 4,266 votes were transferable and Lahiffe beat Shields by over eight hundred votes.
In 1951, Lahiffe, Beegan, Cawley and Shields all contested Galway South again. However this time, nearly 80% of Shields’ transfers went to Cawley ensuring his re-election on the second count.