The first count in the European Elections is in, in the constituency of Dublin, which will elect four members of the European Parliament. In this constituency, much of the centre-right to right focus was on the chances of election of Independent Ireland’s Niall Boylan, who was by some distance the strongest “alternative” candidate for those looking for an option outside of the political establishment.
You can see a live tally of the ongoing count here, in a spreadsheet compiled and managed by Virgin Media’s Gavan Reilly (who fulfills that first requirement for being a political correspondent – being a total election nerd).
After the second count, we can see that no candidate is in touching distance of the quota, and only two have any real chance of hitting the quota at any stage of the count – FF’s Barry Andrews and FG’s Regina Doherty, both of whom will comfortably be elected by virtue of their large gap over the field. It is just about conceivable – but unlikely – that one candidate might ultimately overtake them, but impossible to see a scenario where both are overtaken by four other candidates. As such, we can say with certainty that both will be elected.
After that, there is essentially a four-way tie for two seats between Labour’s Aodhán O’Riordáin, Green Party MEP Ciarán Cuffe, Sinn Fein frontrunner Lynn Boylan, and the aforementioned Niall Boylan. Of these four, Lynn Boylan achieved a significant lead of about 3,000 votes over her nearest competitor on count one. She also has a running mate – Dáithi Doolan – which none of the other three have. Of his 10,000 votes, she will expect to net at least a quarter, extending that lead further.
Niall Boylan has one theoretical advantage over the others, but one only: As the leading candidate on the “right” side of the political spectrum, he might be expected to be the main beneficiary of votes from “right” leaning independents and party candidates. There are up to 35,000 such votes to be transferred, coming from candidates such as Aontu’s Aisling Considine, Independent Malachy Steenson, and Ireland First’s Philip Dwyer. One might expect Boylan to be the main beneficiary of these votes as the counts go on, which should keep him in contention right up to the final counts.
By contrast, Boylan will be hoping that his main rivals – all of whom come from the “left” side of the political spectrum – will split transfers amongst them fairly evenly. For example he will hope that the 16,000 votes from the Social Democrats will hand just a few thousand each to Cuffe and O’Riordáin, with the rest splintering between Brid Smith, Clare Daly, and the FF and FG candidates.
Even this scenario, however, will be difficult for Boylan, because the count will ultimately likely be decided by the eliminations of Brid Smith of People before Profit and sitting MEP Clare Daly. By the time this happens, Boylan would have to have built up a substantial gap on Cuffe and O’Riordain, and hope that those votes strongly benefitted Sinn Fein over them.
It is difficult – but by no means impossible – to see such a scenario unfolding. However, it will require voters on the right of the spectrum to have engaged in real vote discipline, transferring to him after voting for their first preference candidate. In recent days, one prominent right wing activist explicitly advised her followers in both a video and a series of tweets to decline to give Boylan a preference. If the count is close, her advice may well have been critical in electing Mr. Cuffe or Mr. O’Riordáin.
As to how the count will go in general, one might expect that Sinn Fein are favourites to take a seat by virtue of Smith and Daly’s votes – in the 2019 election, when Sinn Fein’s votes were distributed, they heavily favoured Clare Daly. It would be a surprise if the favour was not returned.
That leave three candidates – two of the left and Boylan – for one seat. Boylan’s problem is that ultimately, if he is in the mix, one of Cuffe, Lynn Boylan and O’Riordáin will be eliminated, and their votes distributed.
The one eliminated, at this stage, is likely to elect the other two.
Boylan’s only hope, therefore, is to surge ahead on transfers from the “alternative” candidates as they are eliminated in turn, and hope to be far enough ahead of Sinn Fein or the Labour and Green candidates as to be uncatchable.
That looks very, very difficult to me, at this early stage in the count. But it remains too early to call it impossible.