Election to be called Fri - predict outcome

Unbelievable from a poster trumpeting FG's 'refresh' 😁
Was I dreaming or did we not all watch Brand Harris go down in flames in one of the worst party campaigns in memory?
The 'refresh' here in Monaghan seen the new FG TD get half of the departing FG incumbent's vote.

50% saying no thanks to the refreshing candidate.

So who's going to build the houses if SF and their friends scare away all the lenders and developers?

You are deluded.

Don't think it's correct/fair/logical to just compare one candidates 2024 vote with a different candidates 2020 vote, and declare a 50% drop on that basis. Because FG run a 3-candidate strategy.

2020 total was 17.7% + 7.1 + 1.8. (Total 26.6)
2024 total was 8.95% + 6.25 + 6.1 (Total 21.3). Clearly a much more efficient 'sharing' of the constituency than 2020.

So the cumulative drop is 'only' 20%, not close to your 50%. 2 factors could contribute to this beyond any general unpopularity of FG.
1. Heather Humphreys own personal vote as a known big name. Perhaps the new TD will become the big name at some stage and have a large first preference vote.
2. The geography of the constituency changed with a small county Meath section removed and transferred to Meath East. I think it's reasonable to suggest that this Meath area would have tended more towards FG than the Cav/Mon sections.

FG were hopeful for two (they were intent on running 3 when Heather was still there) they got one.

Which completely ignores my pointing out how incorrect you were to talk about a 50% drop. Are you tacitly admitting you were wrong?
As for them hoping for 2 seats. I see nothing on the 2020 figures to suggest this was plausible. But ultimately it is usually better to run more candidates than you expect to win seats (as SF found out in 2020) because no-one ever knows what way the final week of a campaign is going to go. Put yourself in a position to win 2, even 3 if something mad happens and the other side have a meltdown.

Not necessarily - We only need to go back to the demise of FF just over a decade ago to see what can happen in politics. It's not inconceivable that such an event can happen again in the future, although if it is SF as the alternative, it will take some amount of work to get there, although not impossible.

I see PR is being now thrown out the window to try and write a win.

Very good. The pivoting is a delight to see.

David Maxwell or T.P. O'Reilly were seen as the front runner replacements. Maxwell came close but did not get 50% of of Heather's vote.

It was the consensual view of any of the analysis I watched that FF were doing much better on transfers from FG than vice versa.

Do you expect developers to work for no profit?

Assuming you have a job do you do it for no renumeration?

Do you realise the risks developers take buying land and putting houses on it?

As a state we have just voted FFG.

🤣 Oh dear, who said anything about no profit? That you jumped to that exaggeration shows that you're worried. A left alliance is a bad thing for you. Let's hope they agree to stick together. FFG and their buddies are in panic mode trying to get Labour or the SD's as their fall guys.

Not being smart but I think her working class accent would go against her. There's a certain type of middle class voter who'd consider voting for a party with MLMD or Eoin O'Broin as the leader and their middle class accents. The kind of people who would vote for Richard Boyd Barret but not for Gino Kenny. I don't know if it's a subconscious bias thing or what but I definitely believe it would be a factor.

I think Pearce Doherty's strong northern accent would also be an impediment to people away from the border counties. There are plenty of politicians in the Dail who raise their voices a lot (Michael Healy-Rae, Michael Fitzmaurice, Richard Boyd Barrett, Micheal Martin, Mattie McGrath) but he's the only one that gets referred to as being "shouty".

These things should not matter but they often do.

It is a mixed bag of reasons for Fine Gael.

Firstly, they had a large number of retiring TDs which created uncertainty about how to replace them.

Secondly, this uncertainty led to poor candidate strategies in certain constituencies. Take Wexford. In a four-seater, you need 20% of the vote to take a seat. Fine Gael got 15% which if they had one candidate, would have left them in third place on the first count. They had two candidates and filled 5th and 7th on the first count. When Bridin Murphy was excluded on the 10th count, only 1,877 of her 3,756 votes went to her running mate. This meants that 1,879 went elsewhere, and 439 went to Labour. Take those 439 off Labour and add 1,879 back to Cathal Byrne and he is only 300 votes short of a seat. Similar issues with failed second candidates happened in other constituencies like Donegal.

Thirdly, even where they looked to have run well with two candidates - Meath East - the second one lost out narrowly.

Fourthly, there were issues with candidates. Patsy O'Brien definitely cost them a seat and John McMahon probably cost them a seat. Billy O'Shea was the wrong candidate in Kerry.

Fifthly, I haven't seen a full analysis yet, but they didn't seem to pick up as many transfers as FF.

Overall, you could put each of these separate issues down to the number of TDs returning, from getting the candidate strategy wrong to picking the wrong candidates to not picking up transfers because of lack of name recognition.