Looking at the Donegal maps, they only serve to emphasise that Thomas Pringle owes his seat in great part to a strategic blunder by Sinn Fein – namely not realising the weakness of Padraig MacLochlainn.
The total Sinn Fein vote was actually up slightly from 2011 in the old Donegal Nth-East – from 25% to 26%. The problem was that a lot of it – 43% of it – didn’t go to MacLochlainn.
In fact Pearse Doherty outpolled him in the Letterkenny Electoral area and in Letterkenny town itself (where MacLochlainn’s vote fell from 20% to 9%). Even in his base in the Inishowen electoral area, he took just 70% of the party vote – the only area where MacLochlainn’s vote increased was the Burnfoot box, probably due to the absence of 2011 Fine Gael candidate John Ryan – the Google Earth above shows the swing in Mac Lochlainn’s vote between 2011 and 2016.