EDITORIAL: Will Mayo’s election results mirror national trends?

The general election is approaching fast and the competition is heating up in Mayo. The date for final withdrawals passed on Monday, November 18, and 16 candidates will be going forward in the Mayo constituency. All indications are that we are in for a very close contest when the votes are being counted on Saturday, November 30.
As was always likely with a winter election, candidates are now faced with knocking on doors in challenging weather conditions, and teams of canvassers across the county will have to go out on a limb to try to get their message across in the coming days.
The major bookmakers in the country came out with their odds for the constituency last week, and they are giving at least half of the field in Mayo a genuine chance of taking one of the five seats on offer.
As we speculated here last week, while the three sitting TDs – Dara Calleary, Alan Dillon and Rose Conway Walsh – are almost certain to be returned to Dáil Éireann, it seems unlikely any will reach the quota and be elected on the first count.

Long count
If this is to be the case, we could be in for a very long count in Castlebar. Indeed, the number of counts could run into double digits before the five seats are filled.
With Fianna Fáil only running two candidates, there are no obvious transfers to Calleary, as his running mate Lisa Chambers is highly likely to return a strong first-preference vote to put her in the running for one of the final two seats.
Dillon should receive the highest first-preference vote of the four Fine Gael candidates, and he will be looking to get a healthy transfer from the first of the eliminated Fine Gael candidates too.
As things stand, the bookmakers believe that will be Westport based candidate Keira Keogh. However, she will be hoping the ‘Michael Ring factor’ will make a real difference for her in the closing days of the campaign. She could also be transfer friendly with young voters, given her age profile.
The bookmakers are also giving Independent Patsy O’Brien a real chance of a seat, and this could spell trouble for Fine Gael’s Martina Jennings, who is geographically very close to the former Fine Gael councillor in south Mayo.
Aside from Dillon, the bookmakers believe that Mark Duffy has the best chance of taking a second seat for Fine Gael. However, from a population point of view, it is very hard to see three of the five seats going to candidates in the north of the constituency, which would end up being the case if Duffy were elected alongside Calleary and Conway-Walsh.

Population base
The western/southern half of the constituency houses four large towns in the shape of Castlebar, Westport, Claremorris and Ballinrobe. From a numbers point of view, it would seem more likely that three of the five seats would go to this half of the county.
Again, transfers from the candidates eliminated in the first four or five counts are likely to go a long way towards deciding who will ultimately be elected. There are at least three other candidates who will be expecting to get a substantial four-figure first-preference vote.
These are, in no particular order, Paul Lawless (Aontú), Chris Maxwell (Independent Ireland) and Stephen Kerr (Independent). Given their backgrounds, it is very hard to read where the Lawless and Kerr transfers would go.
In the case of Maxwell, it’s not a straightforward transfer. Geographically, one would expect Keogh to benefit, well but Maxwell is from the Fianna Fáil gene pool. He also does seem to have entered some sort of pact with Patsy O’Brien, entering talks with the Independent Mayo county councillors, including big vote getters like Michael Kilcoyne and Richard Finn.
So, it really is all to play for in the coming days as candidates begin to see the public really engage with the race. TG4 is to bring out a poll on the Mayo constituency this Thursday, and it will be interesting to see what percentages the candidates end up with there.
But as we have seen all too often in the past, polls can be misleading, especially in a constituency as large geographically as Mayo. It really is still all to play for as we enter into the final week and a half of the campaign.