The Candidates in Tipperary were obviously running in the Constituency of, well, Tipperary but looking at Alan Kelly’s tallies a casual observer could clearly be mistaken for thinking that the ebullient Minister for Housing was in fact running in the 1-seat constituency of Nenagh-Newport.

As can be seen in the following map, rather than trying to keep all the people happy at least some of the time, Alan Kelly seems to have chosen instead to keep some people happy all of the time – and almost all of those people were within the borders of the Nenagh-Newport Electoral area (the area to the west of the border denoted by the thick yellow line). In fact, so taken were the voters of Nenagh-Newport with the principles of Responsible Socialism as enunciated by Comrade Kelly that in many areas the Labour vote in February 2016 actually rose in comparison to 2011 – in stark contrast to their vote in the rest of Tipperary and indeed the country.

An examination of the tallies shows that 63% of Alan Kelly’s votes came from Nenagh-Newport – although Newnagh-Newport accounted for just 18% of votes cast.