Skip to main content

By-Elections 2019 - Cork North-Central

Friday 29th November 2019 will see four by-elections take place in Ireland to fill the seats vacated by TDs who were elected to the European Parliament in May's EU elections. The elections will take place in Wexford, Dublin Fingal, Dublin Mid-West, and Cork North-Central. Given that the Dáil is currently operating under a minority Fine Gael/Independent government, facilitated by Fianna Fáil, the results of these four contests could have a major impact on Dáil arithmetic. Based on the 2016 election results, current trends, and candidates I will analyse each seat individually, in individual articles. Today's article is focused on the constituency of Cork North-Central.

This will be a closely contested seat by a range of candidates to fill the seat of Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kelleher who was elected to the European Parliament in May 2019. While Kelleher topped the poll in 2016 in the constituency, he was the only Fianna Fáil candidate on the ticket, it will be interesting to see if all of his 14,000+ votes from 2016 will transfer to the Fianna Fáil by-election candidate Cllr Padraig O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan is a county councillor, as the Dáil constituency is spread across local electoral boundaries, and could pick up a significant rural vote, where voter turnout tends to be significantly higher than in urban areas.

Fine Gael will be running political heavyweight Colm Burke in this election. The former City Councillor, Mayor of Cork City, and MEP for Ireland South, is currently serving in the Seanad since 2011 since he lost his MEP seat to party colleague Seán Kelly. He will certainly be eager to add the position of TD to his curriculum vitae, but with only one seat up for grabs, and given Fine Gael's difficulty in getting one TD elected in 2016 in a four seat constituency, it's hard to see Burke winning this by-election.

There will be an array of candidates who will be using this by-election to test the water for their political parties. The Social Democrats and Aontú will be contesting this constituency for the first time, and will hope to secure a base of votes to build on for future elections. Other parties that will be contesting this election include Labour, the Green Party, and the Workers' Party, who will be hoping to achieve respectable votes, though with surging support the Green Party could certainly be eyeing up a seat in the next General Election, should their candidate Cllr Oliver Moran poll well.

Fianna Fáil's biggest challengers aside from Fine Gael's Burke, could come from Sinn Féin's Thomas Gould and Solidarity's Fiona Ryan. Gould previously contested the 2016 General Election and polled 3,773 first preference votes as an additional candidate for the party, alongside sitting TD Jonathan O'Brien who polled 6,231 votes. This combined vote of  10,004 votes significantly outpolled Fine Gael's two candidates' combined vote, and the vote of Solidarity TD Mick Barry. While Sinn Féin have dropped in support since 2016, Solidarity's support has dropped significantly, and Sinn Féin will be looking for a portion of Barry's vote to stay on the left to see Gould over the line.

What we are likely to see is a close contest between Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Fine Gael, and Solidarity, with the results likely to go in that order. Though it's likely that the top three candidates will be Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Sinn Féin, who will edge this closely contested seat is still to be seen.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sinn Féin Pre-Election Analysis

  Operating off the recent in-depth RedC poll, while taking other recent polls into account, one thing is certain, Sinn Féin will have a time-machine on the top of their list to Santa if the election isn’t called before Christmas. It seems like it was only yesterday when the party was polling in the mid-30s, reaching a high of 36%, and seemed like a government in waiting if they managed to get some smaller parties and independents on board. What must have been a scramble for candidates to even get within a whiff of a majority, now some tough decisions will have to be made as to whether they will even run a second candidate in some constituencies. Keep in mind that in some constituencies where the polled well in 2020, and were polling very well in polls, such as Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan, and Louth, there were rumours of a third candidate being added in the 5-seater constituencies where they were polling close to 50% of the vote. When once there were talks of 60+ seats, now they...

Putin Brings Term Limits Into Question

Love him, hate him, or simply don't care about him, Vladimir Putin will be allowed to serve as President of Russia for the foreseeable future. But one thing that many sensationalist headlines are ignoring, is that he actually has to be elected to continue in his role as the Russian head of state. Whether you think Russia has fair elections or not, it brings a broader question into the fore; should political term limits even exist? Let’s move west of the Kremlin, and think about this political situation with some leaders who are more favourable to westerners than the beast from the east. Barack Obama was not allowed to run for a third term in office in 2016, ultimately leading to the election of Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was simply not as likeable as Obama, something that wasn’t helped by the email scandal or her attack on republican supporters that had an affect on the middle ground. Obama, a much more liked public figure, would have surely retained the White House for a thir...

A 2023 Election Not To Be Ruled Out

  With the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Green Party coalition now entering its third year of a maximum five-year term, many are of the opinion that the trio will ride out the rather undesirable polling figures and wait until the last possible moment to call another general election. Another common opinion is that an election will be called in the second half of 2024, how late in that half dependent on the results of the European and Local elections in May of that year. Both valid points, particularly the latter; a bumper budget in October, semi-decent canvassing weather, and pre-empting the inevitable winter healthcare crisis, all make for a workable scenario for the government parties. However, strategically speaking, taking those points and applying them to October 2023 may make more sense for Martin, Varadkar, and Ryan, should they be willing to gamble their final year of the term for the prospects of another five-year stint running Leinster House. Despite current polling having ...