World of Politics with Harry McGee

Nobody is ever going to give you a definite and scientific analysis of exactly how many transfers will go from one candidate to another, though it’s possible to come close.

The geographical element is also important – more so in rural constituencies. Over 30 years ago, Mickey Doherty was Albert Reynolds’ closest adviser in Longford. When some genius came up with the idea of creating the Longford/Roscommon constituency, Mickey was asked would the Roscommon Fianna Fáil candidates transfer to the Longford Fianna Fáil candidates. He pointed to the River Shannon that divided both counties (and the constituency).

“Votes don’t swim,” was his legendary conclusion.

You will see instances of that in the two Galway constituencies. Connemara candidates will benefit a bit more from a Connemara elimination. It’ll be the same if two candidates from Athenry or Tuam are in the field.

There have been a few patterns in transfers in recent years, emanating from evolving trends and from changing society. The first and most obvious is the historic twinning of the two separate cities, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, has had an impact. It was evident in the local elections and was evident again in the general election.

The second trend was the so-called soft-left transfer where the Greens, Labour and the Social Democrats transferred strongly to each other. That was also a feature of the general election.

The third was the announcement to its supporters by Sinn Féin in the week of the election to transfer to the SocDems and to People Before Profit after their own candidates. That worked both ways with Sinn Féin attracting transfers from both those parties.

So I thought it might be a good exercise this week to see if these trends – and other trends – were evident in the two main Galway constituencies Galway East and Galway West.

The first thing to be said is that both constituencies followed the prediction of pollster Seán Donnelly that the candidates who appear in the top four (in four-seaters) and top five (in five-seaters) after Count 1 will be those who will be eventually elected.

The top four in Galway East and the top five in Galway West all got elected, although it took 16 counts in the latter.

Pictured: Newly elected Fianna Fáil TD Albert Dolan back for one final Galway County Council meeting this week. Photo: Brian Harding.