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6 December 2010

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DONEGAL SOUTH-WEST BY-ELECTION | THE RESULTS

Winner alright: Pearse tops the poll

Sinn Féin win signals potential of coming general election

BY ROBBIE SMYTH

“WE asked people to stand up for Donegal. We asked people to stand up for Ireland. We asked them to vote against the cuts coming down in the budget, the bail-out from the IMF, and the four year plan.” This was new Sinn Féin TD for Donegal South-West Pearse Doherty speaking before entering the count centre on Friday, November 27th, for what was a moment of seismic change in the Irish political landscape.
Doherty polled 39.85% of first-preferences and took the seat on the fourth count after winning a significant amount of transfers from the Labour Party and Independent candidate Thomas Pringle.
Interviewed just after the final announcement of his victory by count returning officer Geraldine O’Connor, Doherty said:
“This was the election this government never wanted to happen and maybe the result will tell you why.”
The result was indeed a significant shift in the political environment, not just in the North-West but across the 26 Counties.
The growth in the Sinn Féin vote was momentous but it has to be viewed in the context of the performance of other parties and the complexities of by-election politics.
Looking first at the other Opposition parties, the table accompanying the article shows that Fine Gael have actually moved backwards for the third consecutive election in this constituency and the Kenny policy of agreeing to the flawed austerity deal has clearly no resonance with floating voters.
It would seem that the decline in the Fine Gael vote was partially matched by an increase in the Labour Party poll but hardly the so-called ‘Gilmore Gale’ predicted by some commentators. And it must have hit hard that some Fine Gael voters have possibly turned to Sinn Féin!
One of the first uses of the ‘Gilmore Gale’ term in the Establishment media was by the Irish Independent’s Fionnan Sheehan in June 2009, writing about the Labour Party’s performance in the EU and local elections.
There was no gale and what are promoted as the two core Leinster House Opposition parties merely traded votes in this poll.
The Fianna Fáil vote collapsed from the 50.52% won in 2007 and The Sinn Féin vote grew for the third consecutive election by 18.62% of the poll. The party did not run here in 1997.
The result shows the impact of sustained political work at a community level. Sinn Féin has increased its local representation in the 1999, 2004 and 2009 local elections and the campaign to win this seat began the day after the 2007 count. It is the result of a growing groundswell for the party.
Donegal South-West has had an interesting history of by-elections following the death of Fianna Fáil TDs. Sitting Fianna Fáil TD Joseph Brennan died in July 1980, with the by-election held four months later in November, electing Clement Coughlan who held the seat in the subsequent three elections of 1981 to 1982.
Clement died in February 1983 and his brother, Cathal, was elected a TD in May again four months later. Cathal died in June 1986 with his daughter elected in the February 1987 general election.
The double-standard of quick by-elections at times when it suited Fianna Fáil is in stark contrast to last weekend’s poll. Most disingenuous was Fianna Fáil’s Mary Coughlan.
The Tánaiste complained in media interviews that Pearse had an advantage because of the publicity surrounding the court case that led to the by-election, that he was photographed alongside Gerry Adams and that, because he had run and “failed” in 2002 and in 2007, his face was known to the voters.
Coughlan did not want to acknowledge that Pearse has been a local councillor from 2004 to 2007 and that Sinn Féin have been on the ground campaigning on local and national issues and that this is the key to last weekend’s victory. No reporter I heard reminded the Tánaiste the publicity from the court case wouldn’t have happened in the first place if her party had allowed the by-election to go ahead in a reasonable time.
An interesting factor in the build-up to the vote was the relative accuracy of the Red C constituency poll conducted for bookmakers Paddy Power between November 12th and 16th. All of the results were within the margin of error (which was plus or minus 4.4% in this poll) except for the Labour vote.
Red C had put Labour at 15% while they actually trailed in at 9.78%. In the 2009 local and EU elections, Red C had put Labour at 18% when they actually polled 13.9% in the EU race and 14.7% in the local elections, with a plus or minus 3% margin of error.
A TNS/mrbi poll for The Irish Times put Labour on 23% and this poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2%.
So, once again we still have unwarranted media hype surrounding the Labour Party. It was exposed in the Donegal South-West election result, as was the failure of Fine Gael to move off its base vote share.
Last word on this goes to Shaun Connolly in The Irish Examiner on Saturday, November 27th:
“I carry the spirit of Michael Collins here with me,” loser Fine Gael candidate Barry O’Neill declared, and he was right - but only in the sense that he’d just been assassinated by an audacious Sinn Féin ambush.”

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