Presidential Election Mayo: Early Tallies show strong Catherine Connolly Vote

Counting in the Presidential Election is underway in The TF Royal in Castlebar. 

With 31% of the 237 boxes tallied, Independent candidate Catherine Connolly is way ahead with 55% of the votes.

Fine Gael's 25% for Heather Humphreys is a distant second on 25% and Fianna Fáil's Jim Gavin is on 5%. 

There is a joint tally operation between Fine Gael and Sinn Fein in Castlebar, with a combined team of 32 tally men.

The tally men expect to have a strong picture at around 10:30am.

A lot of the conversation leading into today's count was around the level of spoilt votes.

This early tally shows that 14% of the votes tallied were spoilt. It will certainly be a trend to keep an eye on as the counting continues in Castlebar. 

Democracy in action

Counting began at 8:30am with the sorting of the postal votes. 

The first boxes opened were from the Ballina Electoral Area. 

The next boxes to be opened will be from the Castlebar electoral area.

READ MORE: Presidential Election: All you need to know about voting in Mayo this Friday

The opening of the boxes from the electoral areas of Westport, Belmullet, Claremorris and Swinford will follow in that order after that.

32 boxes are being opened at a time and there is a total of 237 boxes in the Mayo constituency.

There were 107,414 registered presidential voters in the constituency.