The last time that the people of Dublin went to the polls to choose their MEPs, Fianna Fáil’s Barry Andrews took the final seat. He polled 51,420 first preference votes, or 14.1% of the total vote, coming in third place on the first count. By the end of the count, when he took the fourth and final seat without reaching the quota, he had increased that vote total to only 68,000 votes – garnering only 17,000 transfers out of well over 100,000 votes that were transferred in total. By the end of the count, Clare Daly had comfortably overtaken him to take the third seat, meaning that Andrews had to wait six months for the UK to leave the EU before he could even go to Brussels.
If the most recent polls in Dublin are to be believed, Andrews is on course to top the poll this time, with an Irish Times poll of the constituency putting him on 18% of the vote, just shy of a quota. Many Fianna Fáilers, it seems, believe this, and the atmosphere in the Andrews camp is reputedly quite relaxed.
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