Dublin Central By-election

The last two are fluff and going nowhere. Seems despite a bigger campaign the novelty is wearing off for Hutch, his vote was down

Does any1 have a link to Gavin Reillys Tallys Sheet for Dublin Central? Thanks

Steenson didn't look very happy on virgin media news. Looked like he was going to burst into tears 😅

Three parties can be seen to have failed based on expectations in both constituencies. FF, SF and Aontu.

Aontu is a leader cult, so nothing is going to happen about that; but they were polling strongly ahead of Labour in national polls recently and were putting it out there that they were on the way up over fuel prices etc etc. Flopped.

FF have nobody to replace Martin and have the ability to gain something from the EU presidency, they will likely let him stay on til that. An equivalently bad by-election (DBS 2021) came before them being returned to Government after all.

MLMD however could be ousted. SF have screwed up basically every election since she took over. 2019 LE was a wipeout. 2020 GE they ran too few candidates; 2024 LE they ran too many. 2024 GE did not deliver the results they wanted; and now they've almost certainly lost BEs in two seats where they topped the polls in 2024.

I find the huge FG transfers to the SD's amusing.

These are clearly people who have paid more attention to Holly's lovely wavy hair than to reading her policy proposals. The SD's have some very ambitious plans to increase social spending combined with aggressive taxation raising to fund it. I'm guessing the FG'ers who have transferred to the SD's so strongly aren't even aware of this.

But who cares? Look at all the fantastic coverage the SD's are getting on TV, and look at just how lovely Holly's hair looks.

I don't think he was being factored in as a possible winner by people who would think deep enough to use tactical voting.

anyone know how the hutch / Steenson types did in Galway……that citizens journalist ‘tard’ with the dub accent dwyer was endorsing one guy would be interesting to hear how he got on

Excluded on the second count with 890 first preferences.

Which was still better than People Before Profit - Solidarity, interestingly.

I wonder if the day of Murphy and Boyd-Barrett and their shouty Marxist guff is now truly gone. As Ireland has returned to great prosperity, its clear that champagne socialism is running rings around sackcloth and ashes.

The Soc Dems will make excellent coalition partners for FF and FG from 2030 to 2035.

I think it would be fair to say that SF are not picking up the left transfers they need. Other than the final count with Horner's transfers , and 430 from PBP the two big transfer blocks to Boylan came from Steenson and Hutch. (356 and 1641).

SF rhetoric in the past while is more far right than left. I think they need to recalibrate and decide what they actually stand for otherwise they will lose more and more of the left vote.

Thing is, at some point you have to just go in and contribute to actually running the country. There's only so much shouting you can do from the sidelines before people get tired of it.

Actually a good chance you'll get a good chunk of what you want in a programme for government, too. Look at the Greens, most of the policies that were actually implemented in the last government came from their leg of the stool.

FF and FG, without the Greens, have struggled to actually do anything.

Bacik spoke before that the centre-left (Labour, Soc Dems, Greens) should just make their own bloc of common policies, and tell FF and FG that if they want them in, then they all go in.

Would be far from my preference for the Soc Dems to go in with FF and FG but at some point, you have to accept that it's the only option and make a lasting impact at the risk of losing seats. There's also an element that it's better you go in and get your policies implemented instead of the likes of Aontú or Independent Ireland.

Climate issues being a major feature in politics is cyclical. It's not as en vogue as it was in 2020 but it will come around again, as will the Greens.