Connolly the clear winner in Mayo as blame game begins in Fine Gael

Catherine Connolly took two out of every three valid votes in the constituency of Mayo in last week's Presidential election.

The momentum behind the Galway West TD and Independent candidate was overwhelming even before a single vote was counted on Saturday morning.

As with every political victory, the delight on one side is matched by the despair and soul searching on the losing side.

For local Sinn Féin TD, Rose Conway Walsh, there was a “really quiet satisfaction” with the result and a sense of justification in her party backing the Independent candidate.

Noting that Catherine Connolly was fourth favourite when Sinn Féin came out to support her campaign, Conway Walsh says her party’s decision was “a game changer for the campaign.”

She sees the successful election of Catherine Connolly as “a day of hope.”

The unprecedented coming together of the left-wing parties behind one candidate is creating speculation about a potential voting pact at the next general election.

Sinn Féin TD Rose Conway Walsh at the count in the TF Royal

“I think today is a day we will look back on. Today was the day that people really saw that there was an alternative,” said Conway-Walsh. “We've had 100 years of the same thing, since the foundation of the state. I think people will be able to visibly see in our President that if parties of the left get together, that we can present an alternative voice to the Irish people and an alternative approach to so many things, whether that be housing or health or education, and obviously the reunification of our Island.”

The 66 percent of votes for Catherine Connolly in Mayo was actually 3 percent higher than the national average, which may be counter-intuitive for a traditionally Fine Gael stronghold.

Deputy Conway Walsh sees the result as significant in showing that “there is no county that can be taken now as a Fianna Fáil county or a Fine Gael county. People are changing. Many young voters are making up their own mind about how they're going to vote.”

Higher than expected turnout

How many people would actually vote in this election was the source of a lot of concern for the Electoral Commission and political classes before the weekend, with some speculating it could be as low as 10 percent.

However, there was a 45.5 percent turnout in Mayo and that was matched nationally. It was only marginally down from the 46 percent at the 2018 Presidential Election.

The true turnout figure may in fact have been higher. This is because of legacy issues with the electoral register in Mayo. Mayo was identified as one of the least accurate in the country. Anecdotally, this author knows of one man who had three votes in Mayo.

The role of younger voters in this election will be the subject of much analysis in the coming days and weeks. The Electoral Commission made a proactive effort to register young voters for this election. They registered thousands of younger voters by going to Electric Picnic, the Ploughing Championships and all twelve freshers' weeks. Nationally, 61,000 new voters will have had the opportunity to vote.

One such young voter was the son of Rose Conway Walsh TD. She said that she was “particularly proud of my own son, Peter, who came down on Thursday night without any prompting whatsoever, came down on the late train on Thursday night, voted at seven o'clock yesterday morning, and then got the train back up to Dublin for his lunchtime lectures again at college.”

She said that she thinks many young people did that and young people are showing a renewed interest in politics.

“Young people tend to lean towards the left anyway, traditionally, I think young people will be very significant in how politics is shaped into the future. But for us here in Mayo, it just showed me that people are willing to change if you present the right candidate to them and the right policies to them and explain your stance on things.”

‘Inept’ Fine Gael campaign

In contrast to the delight of the Catherine Connolly campaign, the soul searching within the Heather Humphreys campaign was evident as the blame game began in earnest.

The counting of votes in the TF Royal Theatre in Castlebar has traditionally been a happy place for Fine Gael.

Tom Garvey smiles as he shares that his claim to fame is being the first Director of Elections to put a Fine Gael Taoiseach back in office, when Enda Kenny was returned as Taoiseach in 2016.

Mayo has traditionally been a Fine Gael stronghold and party grandee, Jim Higgins, says the party is in “rude good health at county level.”

Fine Gael's Jim Higgins and Fine Gael Tallyman Willie Geraghty

“We had a good council election, the general election could hardly have been better. It was the outstanding performance in the country. We got two TDs elected, one of whom is a minister, and we also have a senator in the county.”

A party member since he was 18, the former Fine Gael Minister for State says that the party’s use of social media was 'inept'.

The former MEP says it was a “really disappointing aspect” and needs to be prioritised next time out as the Heather Humphreys campaign was “snookered from the word go by the Connolly camp.”

He said the Fine Gael party was “not at the races when it came to social media.”

Tom Garvey said that while the mood within Fine Gael is very down, “it's definitely not a day for hasty decisions. People are talking about leadership and so on. Let's go back and have a look at things. It's definitely not a day for hasty decisions. We've got to keep our heads, the government should continue. I believe this is a good government that is doing a good job, but we just have to listen more to the people.”

Tom Garvey, Vice Chairman of Mayo constituency for Fine Gael and Cllr Ger Deere (FG)

The election of Catherine Connolly as the tenth Uachtarán na hÉireann means that the national electorate has never once elected a Fine Gael member to the office of President of this country.

Fine Gael Cllr Ger Deere says he “would hope” to see a Fine Gael President elected in his lifetime and that “there'll be a lot of lessons learned from all political parties and people who were disappointed that didn't get on the ballot sheet.”

Spoilt votes

Without a doubt, when the ‘Reeling In The Years’ team look back at this election, spoiled votes will feature heavily.

A record number of invalid ballot papers, or spoilt votes, were recorded in Mayo. The names of Maria Steen and Enoch Burke featured heavily, alongside a large number with 'x' written across the ballot paper.

The 6,311 invalid votes made up 13 percent of all votes cast in Mayo. By comparison, there were just 451 invalid votes out of 70,866 cast in the general election, meaning that the equivalent figure was just 0.06 percent of the votes cast.

In the 2018 Presidential election, just 593 votes were registered as invalid in Mayo.

One tally from the combined Fine Gael- Sinn Féin tally for Mayo showed that in the Scoil Íosa Ballyhaunis box, there were more spoiled votes than the combined vote for Heather Humphreys and Jim Gavin.

The tally for Scoil Íosa Ballyhuanis showed that there 54 spoilt votes compared with 32 votes for Heather Humphreys and 13 for Jim Gavin.

A tally of the votes in the Scoil Íosa Ballyhuanis box

Aontú TD for Mayo, Paul Lawless, was one of the over six thousand voters in the constituency to spoil his vote.

He had campaigned for Maria Steen to be a candidate in the election and has called the record number of spoiled ballots “a silent yet deliberate act of protest.”

“Even before we account for the Gavin vote - which, in its own right, represents a form of spoil - the rejection of the political establishment has reached historic heights. When one adds those votes together, the message becomes unmistakable: the people are not being heard.”

Fine Gael councillor Ger Deere has said the spoil the vote campaign was “despicable and disgraceful.”

The Castlebar-based politician said it’s not part of democracy and he didn’t know what it serves.

“If people were told yesterday that they couldn't come in to vote, there'd be a riot outside here today. People died in this country for the right to vote,” Fine Gael councillor Gerry Coyle told The Mayo News.