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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.




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