11:10am – We’re getting early figures in for a bunch of constituencies. They are all confirming the trend that we have seen. In Donegal South-West, the Deputy PM, Mary Coughlan, is in trouble.
9:04am – I’ve been doing some number-crunching of the 2007 election results while we wait for figures. In 2007 Fianna Fail won 77 seats, to 51 for Fine Gael, 20 for Labour, 6 for the Green Party, 4 for Sinn Fein, and 6 others. Breaking down the seats between five regions (County Dublin, County Cork, Connacht-Ulster, Munster and Leinster), Dublin is by far the best region for Labour and the Greens, with 5 of 6 Greens elected there, and 9 of 20 Labour TDs. In constrast, Fine Gael only won 10 seats in Dublin, out of a total of 51.
8:23am – The RTE exit poll has Fine Gael polling 36%, with Labour on 20%, 15.5% for Independents and others, 15% for the governing Fianna Fail party, 10% for Sinn Fein and 2.7% for the Greens. This doesn’t appear to be enough for FG to form single-party government. Fianna Fail polled only 8% in Dublin, which could wipe them out entirely in the capital.
8:15am – It’s now early in the morning in Ireland, where votes will be counted over the weekend to determine the result in the 43 constituencies. Over the next few hours we should see primary vote figures in many constituencies, but it will take the next two days to count all the preferences. RTE Radio 1 is currently reading out an exit poll which I will post in a minute.
Labour is likely to pick up a number of extra seats in Dublin & currounding counties. They may also pick up extra seats in Cork. Their historic weakness, however, has been in the more rural West of Ireland.
It will be curious to see the final result result with regards to Indies. Are we likely to see a wide cross-section from single-issue cranks to disgruntled ex members of major parties ….. and will there be sufficient conservative Indies to favour FG (should they get close to the total needed to form govt in their own right) thus negating a need to form a coalition.
Ireland’s party system is fascinating and continues to involve. Fine Gael’s drift from the “Tammany Hall” approach of Fianna Fial, and the fact that FG, a party of the neoliberal “progressive centre” only seems to form government with centre left Labour!
RTE’s site is streaming “Morning Ireland” at http://www.rte.ie/news/index.html
That’s it, from now on I’m using the phrases ‘transfer toxic’ and ‘transfer friendly’ to discuss preference flows.
Did Luke flanagan get in?
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