Carlow-Kilkenny has existed – apart from a brief interlude between 1937 and 1948 – as a stand-alone constituency since the foundation of the state. In common with other constituencies in the south-east, it had a strong Labour tradition and in the hands of the Pattison family returned a representative at most elections between the 1920s and the new millenium.
Generally Carlow-Kilkenny tended to return two Fianna Fáil, two Fine Gael and one Labour TD for much of its existence although that being said, Fianna Fáil were capable of taking three out of five when the wind was at their backs – in fact, they took advantage of the splintering of the anti-Fianna Fáil vote to take three out of four seats in 2002.
It wasn’t always the historic big three though – The Farmer’s Party, National Centre Party, National Labour Party, The Progressive Democrats, the Greens and most recently Sinn Féin have all taken seats as well. In addition Clann Na Talmhan also took a seat in the Kilkenny Constituency in 1943.
The map above shows how Fianna Fáil topped the poll in most areas Urban and Rural across both counties. Sinn Féin by contrast did best at the margins, topping the poll in the Waterford commuter belt in South Kilkenny and also in Tullow on the far side of Carlow. Something of a surprise was their topping the poll in the village of Borris in rural South Carlow as well.
RECENT CONSTITUENCY RESULTS
| YEAR | SEATS | Fianna Fáil | Fine Gael | Labour | Sinn Féin | Greens | Others |
| 1997 | 5 | 42.2% 2 | 29.2% 2 | 15.2% 1 | 5.5% | 7.8% | |
| 2002 | 5 (4 + 1 CC) | 50.2% 3 | 21.8% 1 | 6.1% 1* | 3.4% | 8.2% | 3.4% |
| 2007 | 5 | 47.7% 3 | 29.6% 1 | 9.3% | 3.8% | 8.0% 1 | 1.6% |
| 2011 | 5 | 28.1% 1 | 39.2% 3 | 16.2% 1 | 9.5% | 2.8% | 4.0% |
| 2016 | 5 | 40.4% 2 | 27.4% 2 | 6.3% | 12.4% 1 | 3.7% | 9.8% |
| 2020 | 5 | 37.3% 2 | 21.8% 1 | 3.0% | 23.8% 1 | 6.7% 1 | 7.6% |
THE 2020 ELECTION
Despite dropping nearly three points since 2016, Fianna Fáil came closer to a third seat in 2020 than they did the previous time – only 558 votes seperated Malcolm Noonan of the Green Party and the late Bobby Aylward (R.I.P.) of Fianna Fáil on the final count.
The reason Fianna Fáil came so close off just over 2.2 quotas was because of the extremely disjointed shape of the first count. Sinn Féin had just over 1.4 quotas, but no candididate in Carlow. Fine Gael had 1.3 quotas split between three candidates so were never in the frame for a second seat, and Malcolm Noonan of the Greens got barely over 0.4 quotas.
You could have been forgiven for thinking – as some august election pundits on election night did – that the late Bobby Aylward (R.I.P.) had an unassailable lead over Malcolm Noonan; indeed, Fianna Fáil got nearly twice as many Sinn Féin transfers as the Greens did. Overall, 20.6% of Sinn Féin surplus transfers went to Fianna Fáil, the highest transfer rate in the country.
However, many of the other Sinn Féin – not least the nearly two thousand which went to the Solidarity-PBP candidate (which more than doubled her vote) were down-the-line anti-establishment votes who began to re-emerge during the count like a slowly building tsunami, with the key count being the seventh where the Solidarity-PBP elimination saw over two thousand votes transfer to Malcolm Noonan and less than two hundred to Bobby Aylward sealing his fate.
A secondary contest in Carlow-Kilkenny has been the perennial battle between Carlow and Kilkenny for the final seat. On population figures, Carlow should just about have the edge, but the gravitational pull of big-hitting Kilkenny political figures has seen Carlow votes drift more to Kilkenny both before election day and during the counts – indeed the final count this time didn’t even feature a second Carlow aspirant.
| YEAR | FINAL COUNT WINNERS | FINAL COUNT LOSER |
| 2020 | Malcolm Noonan (GP – Kilkenny) 10,543 | Bobby Aylward (FF – Kilkenny) 9,985 |
| 2016 | Bobby Aylward (FF – Kilkenny ) 11,353 Pat Deering (FG – Carlow) 11,149 | Jennifer Murnane-O’Connor (FF-Carlow) 9.518 |
| 2011 | John Paul Phelan (FG – Kilkenny) 12,574 Phil Hogan (FG – Kilkenny) 11,997 Pat Deering (FG – Carlow) 10,486 | Bobby Aylward (FF – Kilkenny) 8,610 |
| 2007 | Mary White (GP – Carlow) 10,464 | John Paul Phelan (FG – Kilkenny) 9,815 |
Notice how Pat Deering of Carlow was only eighteen hundred votes clear of Bobby Aylward in 2011 – if Aylward had taken the last seat, all five TDs would have been from Kilkenny.
One of the interesting things I noticed is that – in the two major towns (Carlow and Kilkenny) – the relationships between the votes of the major parties (as measured by correlations) isn’t necessarily uniform. In both Carlow and Kilkenny the Sinn Féin is highly negatively correlated to the Fine Gael vote on both instances, but not necessarily the Fianna Fáil vote.
The Correlations are shown in the table below.
| AREA | FF/FG | FF/SF | FG/SF | FG/GP | SF/GP |
| Kilkenny City | -0.53 | +0.33 | -0.86 | 0.51 | -0.73 |
| Carlow Town | +0.23 | -0.66 | -0.84 |
As can be seen, in both Carlow and Kilkenny the Sinn Féin and Fine Gael votes were very strongly negatively correlated – however the Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin showed differing relationships.
This is something I might look at in other large towns as I go through the constituencies – and indeed might do a stand-alone report upon.
THE CONSTITUENCY REDRAW
The Constituency Commission recommended that 13 District Electoral Divisions from North-West Kilkenny be moved into the newly minted Tipperary North. This will involve a movement of just under six and a half thousand souls as per the 2022 census. The area is mainly rural with several villages such as Galmoy, Urlingford, Tullaroan and Freshford in the area,
Being quite honest, I was expecting a Munster-Leinster provinicial breach in Kilkenny, but this was not where I was expecting it. Given the extension of the Waterford suburbs over the Kilkenny border in Ferrybank, it probably would have made much more sense for it ro happen there, Indeed the voting patterns seen in Ferrybank and surrounding areas differ greatly from the rest of rural South Kilkenny.
Quite beside how hardened hurling fans in North-West Kilkenny will take to being shoved into the Premier County, the addition of the Kilkenny appendage gives the new Tipperary North a rather misshapen look.
As can be seen from the map above, John McGuinness topped the poll across most of the area being ceded, bar a small rural area on the Tipperary border. Overall, Fianna Fáil took 46% (McGuinness 30%, Aylward 15%, Murnane-O’Connor 1%) of the votes cast here, amounting to just over fourteen hundred votes. Fine Gael took 22% and Sinn Féin 20%. The breakdowns for the main candidates are shown below.
| Candidate | Party | 2020GE | Losing | TOTAL |
| Funchion | Sinn Fein | 17,493 (23.8%) | 631 (9.9%) | 16,862 (23.9%) |
| McGuinness | Fianna Fáil | 10,558 (14.3%) | 959 (30.3%) | 9,599 (13.6%) |
| Murnane | Fianna Fáil | 9,351 (12.7%) | 35 (1.1%) | 9,316 (13.2%) |
| Aylward | Fianna Fáil | 7,550 (10.3%) | 471 (14.9%) | 7,079 (10.0%) |
| Phelan | Fine Gael | 6,396 (8.7%) | 281 (8.9%) | 6,115 (8.7%) |
| Deering | Fine Gael | 5,929 (8.1%) | 57 (1.8%) | 5,872 (8.3%) |
| Noonan | Green Party | 4,942 (6.7%) | 126 (4.0%) | 4,816 (6.8%) |
| O’Neill | Fine Gael | 3,674 (5,0%) | 368 (11.6%) | 3,306 (4.7%) |
The net result of the change would (on the 2020 figures) would have seen the gap between Malcolm Noonan and the late Bobby Aylward widen slightly