Analysis of the 2009 Local Election Results in Dublin March 18, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Many thanks to AK of the Irish Election Literature Blog (who has become a very welcome ex officio contributor to the CLR) for writing up this analysis of the 2009 Local Election Results in Dublin focusing on Fianna Fáil transfers and seat bounces. For anyone, but most particularly the left, this is an important battleground… perhaps the most important one, whatever our affiliations, because of the sheer concentration of left wing voters (such as that concentration may be). AK has carried out an analysis of other parties which it would, I think, be useful to post here as well in the near future.
Seat Bounce stats for 2009 LE in Dublin
Dublin City Council
FF 11.5% of seats with 17% of votes (seat bounce of 0.67)
FG 23% of seats with 18% of votes (1.28)
Labour 36.5% of seats with 27% of vote (seat bounce of 1.35)
GP 0% of seats with 3% of votes
SF 13.5% of seats with 12% of votes (1.13)
PBP 4% of seats with 4% of votes (1)
Left (WP +Ind) -10% of seats with 10% of votes (1)
SDCC
FF 15% of seats with 18% of vote (0.83)
FG 31% of seats with 27% of vote (1.15)
Lab 35% of seats with 25% of vote (1.4)
SF 11% of seats with 11% of vote (1)
Fingal
FF 16% of seats with 16% of vote (1)
FG 25% of seats with 21% of vote (1.19)
Lab 37.5% of seats with 26% of vote (1.44)
SF 0 seats wit 5%
GP 0 seats with 6%
SOC 12.5% seats with 14% of vote (.9)
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown
FF 14% of seats with 16% of vote (.87)
FG 40% of seats with 34% of vote (1.18)
Lab 29% of seats with 23% of vote (1.26)
SF 0 seats wit 3%
GP 0 seats with 6%
PBP 7% of seats with 7.5% of vote (1)
At the last General Election in the Dublin Constituencies
FF 40% of seats 39% of votes (1.03)
FG 21% of seats 19% of votes (1.11)
LAB 19% of seats 14.5% of votes (1.31)
GP 11% of seats 8% of votes (1.38)
PD 2% of seats 4% of votes
SF 2% of seats 7% of votes
Party seats/ quotas
Fianna Fail
Dublin City Council
1 seat
Cabra Glasnevin 2.05
Clontarf 1.22
Donaghmede 1.07
Artane Whitehall 1.06
Pembroke Rathmines 0.98
Ballymun Finglas 0.93
0 seats
South West Inner City 0.8
Crumlin Kimmage 0.66
Ballyfermot Drimnagh 0 seats 0.5 quota
North Inner City .59
South East Inner City .59
SDCC
1 seat
Clondalkin 1.35
Rathfarnham 1.21
Tallaght Central .99
Tallaght South 1.05
no seats
Lucan (a six seater) .8 quota
Fingal
1 seat
castleknock 0.97
Howth-Malahide 1.07
Mulhuddart 1.15
Swords 0.93
No seat
Balbriggan 0.62
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown
1 seat
Dundrum 1.06
Glencullen Sandyford 1.02
Stillorgan 0.94
Dun Laoghaire 0.77 (lab got 2 seats on 1.13)
no seat
Ballybrack 0.68
Blackrock 0.89
Looking at the stats Fianna Fáil’s core vote dropped too low to elect councillors in many areas.
Not alone that but looking at the stats for quotas required, FF in all bar one area had to have at least 0.93 of a quota to get elected, which was very large considering the amount of Non Transferable
votes there would be about the place. In essence FF have gone back to being transfer unfriendly (Its probably best to look at Eoin Ryans figures in the Euros to see the lack of transfers he got.)
The only LEA to buck the trend was 6 seat Dun Laoghaire where Cormac Devlin scraped in on the last count with FF initially on 0.77 of a quota.
FF fielded too many candidates in some areas which also diluted their vote.
Its also apparent from the seat bounce stats (and the counts themselves!) that Labour got transfers from everywhere. Indeed there was a marked shift relating to both Green and Sinn Fein Transfers.
Sinn Fein transfers in the past have favoured both Fianna Fail and the Green Party. This time though Labour were the main beneficiaries, especially where a candidate from the Left was not still involved.
The more middle class an area the higher the Green Transfers were to Labour too.
Strikingly in Dublin City Council The broad Left (Lab, SF, PBP, WP and Ind) got well over half the vote.
In cases where there were no Labour candidates remaining The Left actually transfered to Fine Gael in numbers too.
That opposite could also be seen in cases where Fine Gael transfered more to Sinn Fein than to Fianna Fail. Of course in the Euros we had transfers to Joe Higgins from everywhere to keep Eoin Ryan out (and Mary Lou McDonald also).
Needless to say Fine Gael also transfered well to Labour.
In all councils the Labour vote was up and in all bar DLR the seat bounce was up too.
In all Council area Fine Gaels seat bounce was higher than that of the 2007 General Election as was their first Preference vote.
So what is indicated are a number of different dynamics.
The usual transfer pattern along Left/ Right lines but also the added change in that Labour got a lot more transfers from all quarters especially Sinn Fein and The Greens.
A more pronounced transfer pattern along government /opposition lines. We are probably more polarized now than ever.
So whats in it for the Left?
Well if the Left are in a position to strike, transfers will be far more likely to come their way,in many cases not due to who they are, but due to who they are not.
Labour
Dublin City Council
3 seats
Pembroke Rathmines 2.33
2 seats
Artane Whitehall 1.97
Ballymun Finglas 1.89
Crumlin Kimmage 1.99
North Inner City 1.75
South East Inner City 1.9
South West Inner City 1.75
1 seat
Ballyfermot Drimnagh 1.23
Cabra Glasnevin 1.29
Clontarf 0.99
Donaghmede 1.76
SDCC
3 seats
Tallaght Central 2.39
2 seats
Lucan 1.03
Tallaght South 1.67
1 seat
Clondalkin 1.51
Rathfarnham 0.99
Fingal
2 seats
Balbriggan 1.81
Howth-Malahide 1.63
Mulhuddart 1.63
Swords 1.53
1 seat
Castleknock 0.82
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown
2 seats
Ballybrack 2.04
Dun Laoghaire 1.13
1 seat
Blackrock 1.11
Dundrum 1.19
Glencullen Sandyford 1.66
Stillorgan 0.74
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
I would love to see the FF-free zones repeated in a general election — even in just one constituency. Do the local election figures give any insight to the prospect of that?
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i would particularly love if one of those was Dublin Central and the wheels fell off the Bertie machine – and on the bye-election results, it’s possible.
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Two outside possibilities on those figures would be Dublin Central (if Bertie doesn’t stand) and Dublin South Central. The other one on those figures is Dun Laoghaire.
In the Dublin Central by-election, Of all the transfers available (1624) before he was eliminated Maurice Ahern got just 138 (8.5%) of them.
These two areas would in the main make up Dublin South Central.
Sean Ardaghs son lost his seat in Crumlin Kimmage, of the available 4071 transfers he got 395, less than 10%.
In Ballyfermot Drimnagh David Gaynor, the last of the two FF candidates to be eliminated, had less votes than the total Fianna Fail first preference vote.
In Dun Laoghaire its hard to see, despite it being reduced to a four seater, both Andrews and Hanafin losing their seats. That said the FF vote was very poor in Blackrock, Ballybrack and Dun Laoghaire wards.
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I feel that anyobody but FF factor will be huge. They will get very few preferences. This will mean that they will have to get elected on the first count and there will be little coming their way to push them over the top.
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And as IELB notes, then we’re in new territory. I think Dublin Central could provide a watershed…
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Dublin Central will be interesting for a lot of reasons. If Mary Fitzpatrick is the candidate I’d expect FF to hold the seat. She’s popular, and a good councillor (by the standards these things are judged on here) and her very well known issues with the St Luke’s camp mean there’s an air of “not quite FF” about her which may shield her from the anyone-but factor.
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Or ‘I can’t believe it’s FF’..! 🙂
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[…] Analysis of the 2009 Local Election Results in Dublin « The Cedar … […]
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Dublin South East could, on a really bad day for FF, return no FF seat. DSE has the lowest FF vote in the country to begin with so it could happen.
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And presumably Gormley’s a goner too – so what? 2 Lab, 2 FG? or SF in with a shout?
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A few points on the Dublin results:
The wards for the council elections generally have more seats than the Dáil constituencies in their area (for example, Pembroke-Rathmines in Dublin South East is a six-seater, whereas Dublin South East is a four-seater). Jim O’Callaghan might have scraped together 14.3% to get a seat in Pembroke-Rathmines, but 14.3% wouldn’t be anywhere near enough for Chris Andrews. There seem to be very few areas in Dublin where FF are on a Dáil quota.
In a lot of Dublin constituencies, FF are going to be obliged to run two candidates because they have two sitting TDs (e.g. Pat Carey and De Brudder in the three-seat Dublin North West) without having a whole quota between them. In a situation where FF are in addition transfer-toxic, you may get a lot of FF candidates stranded on 0.4 of a quota and being overtaken for the last seats.
And finally, FF local election candidates might be able to plausibly distance themselves from central Government decisions in a way that FF TDs won’t be able to.
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“And finally, FF local election candidates might be able to plausibly distance themselves from central Government decisions in a way that FF TDs won’t be able to.”
And that, worryingly, could see the soldiers take some seats as their “locally loyal” councillors pick up whatever transfers that are available.
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Even a TD like Charlie O’Connor in Tallaght is (quite successfully) painting himself as blameless for what Fianna Fáil does while remaining relentlessly loyal to Fianna Fáil.
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is it true that hypoteticly if FF did get re elected based on last years local government results they wouldn’t win the seanad.
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Yes in that they got less than a quarter of all available council seats….. but sure won’t Enda be abolishing the Seanad anyhow!
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And yet I think shea you’re onto something there. That has to be a problem for them, not least in that their ability to feed as many potential candidates through the Seanad.
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would it be fair to say that the only parties FF could form a stable government numbers wise meaning control of the seanad would be labour or FG, out side of that they are as relivent as any other small party or independent.
worldbystorm yeah the groming argument is interesting, but think there problem is possibly bigger. maybe iam over stateing the power of the seanad here but my understanding is that is does have the power to veto legislation but powers have never been used because a situation has never arisen before where the government never had a majority in the seanad. i accepts odds are it won’t happen this time either that FG are favourites but hypoteticly it could.
and at a time like this FG call for the seanad to be abolished when down the like it could be a handy ace. either they are the honest party or there fools.
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It is an interesting point: parties in decline can get locked into a spiral where fewer councilors leads to fewer decent candidates for parliament leading to fewer votes, leading to fewer people wanting to get involved and so on.
If, as I contend, FF could be heading into a prolonged – more than one term – period in opposition, then strange things can happen. A look at the successive struggles of the two main parties in Britain to render themselves electable might be instructive. Both tried electing leaders that spoke the language of their own party but alienated the public – Michael Foot, IDS – both faced chronic decline in membership till all that was left were aging, unelectable apparatchiks, and both were rescued by leaders who were utterly different from the party they led. Tony Blair was about as un-Labour as you can get, and while Diamond Dave is a bit more Tory than that (though perhaps not as much of a Tory as Tony…..), he remains stunningly unrepresentative. And each had to recruit candidates wholesale from outside party ranks – unideological, ambitious managers rather than politicos -and impose stringent central office control to avoid scaring the voters with the ‘real’ face of their respective parties.
So is that what lies ahead for FF? one odd thing, and a tribute to how well the party worked up till now, is that the cabinet is relatively young, despite 13 years in govt. – younger than either opposition front bench, I would guess: this may actually be a problem, however: when Cowen goes, each of them in turn – D. Ahern, Martin, Dempsey, Hanifin – will want a go, much as FG went through all their senior ministers in turn. Ten years might pass before the current front bench are exhausted, by which time the new blood will have dried up at source…… so where will they look?
New FF….. be very afraid…..
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Fantastic stuff… in a good way… The internecine warfare in such a scenario would be something to see. One wonders if the power which has provided so much of the glue for FF once gone would see it split in some fashion. I still think the 5% Labour has gained may have some unpredictable effects on their former home…
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Will Mary Hanafin’s stock as a leadership contender rise from her being demoted by Cowen & Co and becoming a ‘Princess Over the Water’, combining the qualities for FFers of being articulate and apparently able and FF to the core yet still shafted by a disastrous Biffo and the boys?
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When bad people fall out good people come into their own. Forget the exact quote. Let us get rid of the lot. Making Biffo a sacrificail lamb lets the rest of the hook.
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[…] thanks to AK at the Irish Election Literature Blog for the following analysis, part of a continuing series, which I think will be of considerable […]
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[…] thanks to AK at the Irish Election Literature Blog for the following analysis, part of a continuing series, which I think will be of considerable […]
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[…] that tactic from a far lower base is very risky and they did make a mess of their 2009 Local Elections campaign in Dublin. Share this:ShareFacebookTwitterEmailDiggRedditStumbleUponLike this:LikeBe the first to like this […]
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