Her native county overwhelmingly back Galway’s Catherine Connolly on her way to becoming Ireland’s tenth President – with her share of the vote in her home constituency of Galway West the highest in the country at 76.8 per cent.

The outgoing Independent TD for Galway West took just under 80,000 first preference votes across the three Galway constituencies.

Her aggregate total of 79,330 votes across Galway West, Galway East and Roscommon/Galway was more than three times Heather Humphreys’ 24,462, while Jim Gavin, who’d pulled out of the race, won 6,084 first preference votes.

That highest share of the vote in Galway West was ahead of her 72.75% share of the vote in Galway East and 63.57% in Roscommon/Galway.

Catherine Connolly had started out her long and historic day with a brief visit to the Galway West count centre in Salthill, where the Shantalla woman said that, while celebrations would be premature, “pride is coming”.

Even at that early stage she was clearly on her way to victory, with more than 80% of votes going in her direction in some city boxes – 84% of number one votes tallied from Presentation Primary School were for Deputy Connolly.

“I went to Presentation School so I’m delighted,” said the Independent candidate.

Thanking her supporters, Deputy Connolly said she understood those who hadn’t backed her to become the next President of Ireland.

“I want to thank all my supporters, and I want to thank everybody – even those that didn’t vote for me. I understand their concerns in relation as to who will represent them best and I will do my upmost to represent everybody,” she said.

She travelled to Dublin Castle in the evening ahead of her formal declaration, as she became the tenth President of Ireland, succeeding Michael D Higgins, a former Labour colleague with whom she already had such a long history.

Galway West

First count

Catherine Connolly (Ind) 35,441

Heather Humphreys (FG) 8,475

*Jim Gavin (FF) 2,208

*Withdrew from campaign

Galway East

First count

Catherine Connolly (Ind) 26,631

Heather Humphreys (FG) 7,858

*Jim Gavin (FF) 2,116

*Withdrew from campaign

Roscommon/Galway

First count

Catherine Connolly (Ind) 17,258

Heather Humphreys (FG) 8,129

*Jim Gavin (FF) 1,760

*Withdrew from campaign

Caption: Deputy Catherine Connolly at the Galway West Count Centre in Salthill this morning.

Don’t miss full coverage of this historic Presidential election in next week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops from Thursday, when you can also download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.