Election 2024

There are only 2 realistic left votes and I'm not even sure SD are a realistic chance at a seat in Limerick. PBP and anyone else will only pick up token votes.

The city is very up in the air for that 4th seat. The big 3 will all think they can take it and Leddin will still be in the mix. Frankie will do well rambling on about an A&E he can't fix and we get to see if a new candidate can bring back some of the old Labour vote

I don't think there is a huge SF to left transfer. Some of the recently acquired younger SF voters would be transfer friendly to SD or Labour but for the most part they are not pulling votes from the same places.

Seat 4 could really come down to fine margins like who comes where in the cull. Let's say Sheehan, Ryan, Byrne and Leddin are all within a few hundred of each other. Sheehan getting cut because he is 50 votes behind Ryan could put Leddin in whereas Ryan getting cut could put Byrne in for instance.

Interestingly Limerick City/East has only ever elected 1 independent (sort of as it was due to a Labour split). Michael Lipper in 1977.

I could see you voting independent Cookie now that Michelle Hayes is running 🤣

Michelle Hayes is the "voice of the people" according to her election posters

Leddin's mayoral push was pretty poor and he clearly had no interest. He would have been my first choice until I heard him in the debates. Quinlivan had a similarly poor campaign by his standards.

Seeing as the clear front runners were independent I don't think the mayoral election tells us much.

In the City, I think the returned TD's will be O'Dea, Quinlivan, O'Donnell and one of either Sheehan or Daly taking the 4th seat IMO.

Now how anyone could give Frankie a 1st preference after his debate performances in the DEM race is beyond me? But, that said he does have a reputation as an effective counsellor.

Last election Daly transferred well to Leddin on his elimination, this time round I expect that to be reversed. I don't see Dee Ryan doing well on 1st preferences, nor do I think she will do well from O'Dea's transfers.

There will of course be some support for the Hospital candidates but I am absolutely loath to vote for a single issue candidate particularly when we have far more than just a single issue wrong with Limerick, the Mid West and indeed Ireland.

We are a representative democracy, whomever we send to the Daíl really must be capable of being across the entire political brief. I've yet to have any of our independents spark any confidence in that regard.

One policy candidates only work with something the government is ignoring and a seat that the government is targeting.

Limerick would need to elect so many A&E TD's that it's takes out O'Dea and O'Donnell.

Also UHL ED is such an embarrassment for the government and would be such a win if fixed that I really don't think the problem is Limerick being ignored or not cared about. That was part of what caused the problem way way back when UHL fell behind but it's not the problem now. If there was an easy fix it would be done.

Only a small difference as single issue candidates are a subset of independents so they join the bottom of my list. Single issue = populism on one issue. Independent = populism on a range of issues.

Oh yeah - AAA rings a bell now! Then were they just a single issue 'party' originally?

Edit: Ok, good old Wikipedia. AAA existed for a while but he contested a 2014 by-election for them mainly on the water charges issue.

Primetime was in Limerick last night and ended with a debate involving Leddin and Sheehan on transport. I don't know if it's Sheehan or Labour nationally but a few times now I have seen him really drive the point that Labour are committed to a lot of "green" policy like Busconnects or high density living without getting into nonsense stuff like trains to Shannon the way Leddin does.

Like many here I think Quinlivan, O'Dea and O'Donnell are nailed on but I think the leaders debates will determine the 4th seat which will be one of those 3 parties also since they're all running 2 candidates