HISTORY

The stand-alone constituency of Offaly has only existed once before – in 2016, where the entire county plus the Barony of Lower Ormond in North Tipperary formed a three-seat constituency.

On that occasion, Carol Nolan (then of Sinn Féin) edged out Eddie Fitzpatrick of Fianna Fáil for the final seat by under two hundred votes.

In all other elections since 1923, Laois-Offaly has been a five-seat constituency.

In 1922 – the “treaty” election – the four seats were contested by four pro-treaty candidates and one Labour candidate, William Davin. Davin got over 46% of the vote (2.3 quotas), presumably due to the absence of an anti-treaty candidate. However, Labour did also win 32% of the vote and 2 seats in June 1927 in a much more competitive election. Davin held a Labour seat until his death in 1956. Since then Labour has only won a seat on two occasions – in 1965 with Henry Byrne, and in 1992 with Pat Gallagher.

Despite Fianna Fáil’s later dominance, they didn’t win three out of five seats until 1938. The election of Oliver J. Flanagan of the far-right Monetary Reform Party in 1943 ensured they didn’t do so again until 1957. Flanagan won two elections under the Monetary Reform banner, and two more as an Independent before joining Fine Gael – he topped the poll in every election until 1977.

From 1957 until 2011, Fianna Fáil took three seats in every election except 1973 when they were outpolled by Fine Gael. Even in 2011, Laois-Offaly was an outlier returning two Fianna Fáil TDs in an election where the party only returned twenty.

RECENT CONSTITUENCY RESULTS

For the table below, I’m using the historical tallies I have available for County Offaly. As you can see I’m treating Parlon’s seat as an Offaly seat – approximately 55% of his vote came from Offaly in 2002.

Otherwise, Laois candidates generally took three of the five seats, albeit by sometimes narrow margins – for instance John Maloney (Laois) beat his Fianna Fáil colleague John Foley (Offaly) for the final seat by only 311 votes in 2007.

YEAR	SEATS	Fianna Fáil	Fine Gael	Labour	P.D.’s	Sinn Féin	Others	Inds.
1997	2*	49.4% 1	25.2% 1	17.6%	5.2%			2.7%
2002	3*	51.4% 1	21.7% 1	3.3%	14.9% 1***	2.9%	0.8%**	4.8%
2007	2	60.3% 1	25.3% 1	1.2%	7.0%	2.6%	0.9%**	2.5%
2011	2	25.0% 1	29.2% 2	4.9%		6.7%	3.8%**	33.0%
2016	3	40.8% 1	15.5% 1		5.6%	12.0% 1	12.8%**	18.6%
2020	2*	35.8% 1	14.3% 1	0.7%	3.0%	18.7%	6.8**	23.6% 1

NOTES:
* In all elections bar 2016, I’m using the amount of seats that were won in by Offaly candidates.
** Votes for Others are as follows…. 2002 – Greens 0.9%, 2011 – United Left Alliance 3.5% Greens 0.3%, 2016 – Renua 11.9% Greens 0.9%, 2020 – Greens 5.3% Solidarity-People Before Profit 0.9% National Party 0.4% Renua 0.2%
*** In 2002 Tom Parlon took a slight majority of his vote from Offaly.

THE 2020 ELECTION

In contrast to the 2016 election in Offaly, where Carol Nolan just scraped in on the last count, in 2020 she had a very comfortable cushion of over five thousand votes on the last count over the Green Party’s Pippa Hackett. In fact she secured more votes on transfers than she did through first preferences.

This was mainly – although far from totally – due to the much improved transfers she received from John Leahy. In 2016 Leahy – then an Independent – transferred 24% of his vote to Nolan (then with Sinn Féin) – In 2020 Leahy – now leader of Renua (v2) – transferred 57% of his vote to her.

As can be seen above, geography also likely plays a factor, with both Leahy and Nolan vying for votes in North-West Offaly – though Nolan pulls votes from a slightly larger area and also crucially polled better in Tullamore. However, going from a transfer rate of 24% to 57% over the course of an election suggests that that their party affiliations (or lack thereof) in 2020 were more compatible.

DEMOGRAPHICS

I hope to add a section on Demographics later.

THE CONSTITUENCY REDRAW

The Constituency Commission recommended that the new Offaly consist of the entirety of the County of Offaly – the area in Laois-Offaly in 2020 plus the portion of Portarlington town in County Offaly which was in the Kildare South Constituency last time.

The image below shows the poll-toppers in 2020 in what will be the new Offaly in the next election. The white line in the east line outlines the boundary between the constituencies of Laois-Offaly and Kildare South.

Taking the tally figures at face value, the party totals for the new constituency would be as follows.

AREA	Fianna Fáil	Sinn Féin	Fine Gael	Renua	Greens	Others	Independents
Laois-Offaly	34.1%	17.2%	13.5%	6.2%	5.0%	1.8%	21.3%
Kildare South	12.6%	28.5%	6.4%		1.8%	4.5%	46.0%
Offaly	33.6%	17.5%	13.4%	6.2%	5.0%	2.0%	22.0%

However, the figures in Kildare South (i.e. North Portarlington) are very much influenced by Portarlington’s status as a Johnny-Come-Lately town to the constituency of Kildare South in 2020, resulting to nearly three-quarters of the vote there going to the two candidates with local connections – Patricia Ryan of Sinn Féin and Independent Cathal Berry.

To give a more accurate insight into how the the three Portarlington boxes vote, I had a look at the vote in the DEDs immediately bordering them (Hammerlane and Ballyshear) – the results are given below

(By the way Ryan would have been elected in Kildare South without the help of the Laois/Offaly votes, but they were absolutely crucial to Cathal Berry’s success)

AREA	Fianna Fáil	Sinn Féin	Fine Gael	Renua	Greens	Others	Independents
Laois-Offaly	34.1%	17.2%	13.5%	6.2%	5.0%	1.8%	21.3%
Port. Nth. (Estd.)	29.3%	21.1%	20.8%		9.2%	6.7%	10.0%
Offaly	34.1%	17.4%	13.8%	6.2%	5.2%	2.1%	21.3%

Interestingly, Charlie Flanagan outpolled his Offaly Fine Gael comrade Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy in those DEDs near Portarlington.

The net result of the change would have seen Barry Cowen (FF) and Carol Nolan (IND) comfortably elected on the 2020 tallies, with Brian Stanley (SF) probably taking the last seat.