2022 Seanad by-election

The Irish electorate voted in the 7th amendment of the Constitution in 1979 to extend a Seanad vote to all graduates, but this has never been legislated for.

Iirc a few others has bits in their literature about climate and biodiversity. A good few had stuff in there about gender issues as well. While the above are important issues, they are hardly the most pressing facing the country right now. That said, maybe that speaks more about an electorate that has the luxury to worry about these kinds of things while the rest of us deal with a housing and cost of living crisis. Only a few mentioned education, which is a bit mad considering it is a university seat.

Decent split for Chu on Oluborode's votes. Clonan now leading.

Counts should be quite a bit slower from now on, decent jump in vote volumes. (once they've done Stocker's 657, which I forgot had to be done first...)

Ironically, the only (IIRC) candidate to mention those issues was the "joke" candidate.

https://www.tcd.ie/seanad/candidates/meetcandidates/Candidate%20Bios/Michael%20McDermott.php

He is running on a loosely-assembled platform of abolishing the Seanad from within and being a voice for current students and the recently graduated who can’t seem to find any accommodation in Dublin because there’s too many hotels in the way. This group is mostly ineligible to vote in this election so it’s clearly something he believes in rather than a shrewd electoral strategy.

I don’t see MacNeill’s votes going to Chu. I think that it will be Clonan

I was wrong and I apologise wholeheartedly to my betters. It is the voting that is only open to ex TCD grads. Any chancer can still try and get themselves on the ballot paper. I assume it must look good on a CV. Still a load of nonsense though.

Why?

5 seaters produce more representative results than 3 seaters, and at least the campaigns in those are on real issues, even if local.

The election here has been campaigned on wishy washy niche issues that are largely irrelevant to most people - it's real elitist stuff, things you can worry about when you don't have anything to worry about quite frankly. As noted above, it was only the "joke" candidate that mentioned the issues that current and recently graduated are facing - which says it all.

The DU constituency is a joke and its well past its sell by date.

I put Tom Clonan as my transfer vote for Maureen Gaffney. I think that he will clean up on MacNeill’s votes and Gaffney’s votes to a lesser extent.

Chu may still do it

Clonan needed that. You'd expect the MacNeill transfers to break his way too.

Chu needed a much better break than that there.

Quill votes I'd expect to go more to Gaffney.

Clonan has picked up more from everywhere than i thought he would.

What's Tom Clonan's story? Nobody seems to have a bad thing to say about it which is always a plus when running for public office. I see that he ran in the general election for this same seat and was the second last candidate to be eliminated (MacNeill was the last) but I don't know anything else about him.

I said it along. Quill will probably go more to Chu than Clonan. I still think Chu could win.