Cork North Central - General Election 2024

Gould, O'Sullivan & Burke should all be safe - which is interesting considering all 3 of them were competing for a seat in the 2019 by-election.

I think Kenneth O'Flynn will get elected as well for Independent Ireland. That's probably bad news for Tony Fitzgerald since he'll be taking some of the otherwise FF vote there.

No idea who gets the final seat: Mick Barry, John Maher, Fitzgerald, Garrett Kelleher and Joe Lynch are possibly all in with a shout.

One interesting thing is that most of the parties seem to be running too many candidates (Lab and Soc Dems running 2 each is bananas; Same for FF and FG running 3 each - likely some gender quota padding going on there though). A bloated field will have a knock-on effect when it comes to transfers as it will likely increase leakage. For that reason it's even more vital to get a big number of first preference votes.

For that reason I'll predict that Mick Barry holds on to his seat (if he runs) purely because he's probably the best known of the rest and the other far-left candidate is an unknown (she ran on a south-side LEA in the recent locals)

Very interesting that Derek Blighe has chosen to run in CNC. I believe he is from Fermoy so Cork East would be his natural constituency. I suspect that he took note of the large vote that Ross Lahive got in the local elections. Regardless he hasn't a hope of getting elected but he's got a big enough name to hoover up a lot of the anti-migrant vote - which will probably eventually end up with O'Flynn if he's learned any electioneering tricks from his old man.

Sandra Murphy Kelleher is a surprise selection for me. Would have thought her husband - councillor (and former Lord Mayor) Colm Kelleher was a shoe in for the nomination given his strong showing in the recent local elections? Maybe his Ballincollig base isn’t enough in the larger CNC constituency. If I recall correctly Sandra was parachuted in at the last minute in the 2020 GE too

Hopefully that tramp Derek Blighe doesn't get in.

First thing this morning on Shandon St, weren't there last night.

When people put posters up extra high it's because they're worried about them being cut down. A friend of mine in Germany explained that to me when I asked why AfD posters were so much higher than others on the poles in their city.

I think if they make a break though it'll be somewhere where they have gotten local councillors elected previously.

Cork North Central is basically the 2 Cork City northside LEAs + a rural stretch to Mallow (probably encompassing Mallow LEA). Between the 3 of those LEAs they didn't feature at all in 2 of them and in one of them Ross Lahive missed out on the last seat (but by 200 votes - so he wasn't particularly close).

I don't think the voter base is there for them in CNC to get someone elected.

They got 2 people elected to Dublin City council so it'd be more likely that they make the breakthrough in a Dublin constituency.

And Glanmire. So Cork NC now is Northside city, Ballincollig, Glanmire and Mallow.

I'd put bets on Eoghan Kenny. He's the only candidate north of blarney and is taking over the Sherlock dynasty.

Padraig o Sullivan will take Glanmire vote and there's a few Ballincollig candidates to split the vote there.

That leaves a few high profile candidates for north city. Mick Barry will be under pressure if burke and Gould take the city votes.

It'll be interesting

Glanmire is on the northside of the city. I’m surprised Ballincollig is in this area and not South Central, since they said they’d use the Lee as the border between the two areas

Tell me you are white, Irish and not obviously gay or trans without telling me you are white, Irish and not obviously gay or trans 😂