I’ve done a time-weighted analysis of the last five Polls and using a Count Simulator have projected the outcomes as follows….
CONTENTS
Methodology
Dublin
Leinster
Munster
Connaught-Ulster
Government Formation
Demographics
Previous Poll Averages
Main Points
I’ve done a time-weighted analysis of the last five Polls and using a Count Simulator have projected the outcomes as follows….
CONTENTS
Methodology
Dublin
Leinster
Munster
Connaught-Ulster
Government Formation
Demographics
Previous Poll Averages
Main Points
Veteran Dublin Inner City activist and politician Christy Burke has been contesting national elections for the past forty years, but the closest the former IRA man and Concerned Parents Against Drugs activist came to being elected was in 2020 on his tenth attempt when he was beaten on the last count by 220 votes.
As a young man, Christy Burke was in the IRA and sided with the Provisionals in the 1970 split. He later spent some time in Portlaoise prison as a consequence.
His first electoral outing in Dublin Central for Sinn Féin was in February 1982, when he took 1,458 (3%) of the vote and was eliminated on the 6th count after only gaining 47 votes in the intervening counts. It has to be said by way of mitigation that he was fishing out of the same pond as the late Tony Gregory (who won a seat for the first time at this election taking 4,703 votes) and Michael White of Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party (who took 1,672 votes). Nearly 60% of his transferred votes went to Gregory (36%) and White (23%)
Continue reading Christy Burke – If at first you don’t succeed….
Thankfully – I’ve managed to come into possession of Tallies for the South Antrim constituency in this year’s assembly election. Given that tallies of any kind are as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth this is quite a catch.
A few notes – these strictly aren’t tallies; they are samples. Only about one-fifth of the votes in each box were sampled. So accordingly there is a margin of error involved, which is why I’m rounding most percentages to the nearest five.
Also, as you can see the Ward boundaries around Lough Neagh extend into the lake. Whether fish vote – and which side of the cultural and political divide they cleave to – is uncertain, but that is the way they are defined.
Anyway for the moment I’m simply going to do a quick Anatomy of the Vote – I will be adding further sections later.
The following workings are based on the preliminary results from the 2022 census.
I was originally going to work solely on the basis of a 171 seat Dail – but based on Adrian Kavanagh’s post regarding what a Boundary Commission might be likely to do, I’m instead going to concentrate on a 176 seat Dáil.
The Counties of Laois and Offaly combined have a population of 174,325 souls which – under Scenario A – would entitle them jointly to 6 seats (5.99 seats based on Population divided by ratio of number of people per Dail Seat).
However, while Laois (entitled to just under 3.15 seats, therefore just within the maximum allowed deviation) could be a standalone constituency, Offaly (entitled to 2.84 seats) is just outside the maximum permitted variance. This can be easily remedied by a transfer of population from Laois to Offaly.
The most obvious Electoral Division is Portarlington South which contains the roughly two-thirds of Portarlington town which lies south of the Laois-Offaly border (Whatever bright spark in bygone days decided to situate Portarlington straddling the border of two counties clearly did not have the interests of future political cartographers and boundary commissioners foremost in their minds).
Continue reading Preliminary Census Returns – Laois and Offaly
The following workings are based on the preliminary results from the 2022 census.
I was originally going to work solely on the basis of a 171 seat Dail – but based on Adrian Kavanagh’s post regarding what a Boundary Commission might be likely to do, I’m also going to include an analysis based on a 176 seat Dáil.
Under Scenario A, County Kildare would be entitled to 8.24 seats – which is within the 5% deviation (7.6-8.4 seats) allowed from the National Average – provided of course both constituencies stay within that national average
The easiest way to ensure that Kildare supports two four-seaters is to transfer seven District Electoral Divisions in the North-West of the constituency (with a population of 9,806 souls) into Kildare South.
This would be a predominantly rural area on the northern border of the Kildare portion of the Bog of Allen. The only town is Prosperous in the south-east of the area – it also contains the village of Johnstownbridge in the north-west.
I’ve done a time-weighted analysis of the last five Polls and using a Count Simulator have projected the outcomes as follows….
CONTENTS
Methodology
Dublin
Leinster
Munster
Connaught-Ulster
Government Formation
Demographics
Previous Poll Averages
Main Points
Neasa Hourigan has – at least temporarily – departed the Green Party fold and now represents Dublin Central as an Independent. This means the total number of years that Dublin Central has hosted a Green TD is just over two – it remains to be seen whether Hourigan will come back under the party whip to augment that total.
Dublin Central wouldn’t hitherto have been considered natural territory for the Greens as it historically has a strongly working-class population in the Inner City and in Cabra, but in the last two decades there has been an increasing younger middle-class presence.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE TUV IN THE COUNT-TIME
It’s an open question as to whether God is man or a woman, but Jim Allister can be in little doubt that he or she is manifestly not a fan of Traditional Unionist Voice. The TUV took 7.5% of the assembly vote but only 1.1% of the assembly votes – quite possibly the most disproportional results a Proportional Representation system has delivered.
TABLE 1 : VOTES PER MLA
| PARTY | VOTES | MLAs | Votes per MLA |
| SF | 250,388 | 27 | 9,273 |
| DUP | 184,002 | 25 | 7,360 |
| Alliance | 116,681 | 17 | 6,863 |
| UUP | 96,390 | 9 | 10,710 |
| SDLP | 78,237 | 9 | 9,780 |
| TUV | 65,788 | 1 | 65,788 |
| PBP | 9,796 | 1 | 9,796 |
Continue reading The Curious Case of The TUV In The Count-Time
I’ve done a time-weighted analysis of the last five Polls and using a Count Simulator have projected the outcomes as follows….
