Trying to make sense of Dublin Central

An aspiring Taoiseach, a prominent Fine Gael Minister, a former socialist TD, The Monk and an anti-immigrant councillor walk into a Dáil constituency.

No, that isn’t the set-up for a Norm MacDonald joke, that is just some of the candidates on the ballot in Dublin Central.

Dublin Central officially wins the award for the most mind-boggling line-up for 2024; not even Louth with its 26 candidates comes close to how strange this race has become.

We will address the 100-tonne elephant in the room first; yes, Gerry Hutch is running, but no, we have no idea of how he will do.

The entry of an independent, high-profile candidate into the race with no prior political experience is nigh-on impossible to predict; making an educated guess (which is really what political journalism is) Hutch’s best day will involve him keeping his deposit or ending up in the top 7.

With that out of the way, we can focus on the actual race.

This four-seater takes in a massive chunk of Dublin, with Cabra, Stoneybatter, Phibsborough, Drumcondra, Glasnevin, North and East Wall and Ballybough all present and accounted for. 

The constituency received nationwide attention in 2020 as Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald received 35.7% of first preferences on a champagne day for the party, along with a breakthrough for the Greens with a win for Neasa Hourigan and Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats.

Then Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe actually lost a percentage of the vote relative to 2016 (13.6% down to 13.3%) but actually gained more in terms of actual numbers thanks to a slight drop in turnout.

In the run-up to November 29, it is looking increasingly unlikely that Dublin Central will return the exact same line-up as 2020.

McDonald and Donohoe are the only two of the four to be sure of holding onto their seat, but in McDonald’s case, it may well be with a reduced majority compared to 2020.

For starters, McDonald has brought in a running mate, something she didn’t have in 2020, but June’s local election results revealed that even in her own backyard things were not going swimmingly for Sinn Féin.

Cabra-Glasnevin and North Inner City are the local electoral areas that make up Dublin Central with 14 seats up for grabs.

Sinn Féin went for broke by running seven candidates, and only got two councillors (Seamus McGrattan and Janice Boylan, McDonald’s running mate) elected.

The four-candidate strategy in Cabra-Glasnevin was nothing short of a debacle for Sinn Féin, mainly because they only got one candidate elected out of four and were nowhere near the top of the heap in North Inner City, with Boylan their only victory out of three.

June was especially stinging for Sinn Féin because Fine Gael, by contrast, ran three candidates in those two constituencies and all three were elected.

Paschal Donohoe’s Prince Of Prudence moniker trickled down to a local level; while Sinn Féin were running enough candidates to fill a football team, Fine Gael kept it simple and were rewarded.

It would take an extraordinary fortunate of events for McDonald to even come close to losing her seat in Dublin Central, but her re-election won’t be with the resounding 35.7% haul she received in 2020.

Any ideas of Sinn Féin getting two candidates elected here ended the minute Clare Daly announced her candidacy in late October.

Sinn Féin taking their left-wing flank for granted since the 2020 election could come back to haunt them here and it may be Fine Gael of all parties that benefit from Daly’s entry into the race.

Daly has received the backing of former independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan, independent councillor Cieran Perry (who topped the poll in Cabra-Glasnevin), former MEP Patricia McKenna and local political activist Joe Mooney who became the face of local resistance to the East Wall anti-immigration protests in early 2023.

Daly comes into this general election campaign with a point to prove having lost her European seat in June.

Daly’s entry into the race now makes Gary Gannon and Neasa Hourigan’s re-election hopes a lot shakier than they would have been a few weeks ago.

Hourigan has the benefit of going against the Greens on the likes of lifting the eviction ban and the National Maternity Hospital (being suspended from the party twice for her troubles) but Hourigan’s win in 2020 was very much a result of the Green Wave which hit global politics in 2019 and 2020.

It is not impossible for Hourigan to retain her seat (Feljin Jose actually topped the poll in Cabra-Glasnevin and was elected behind Cieran Perry while Janet Horner held onto the former Ciaran Cuffe seat in North Inner City) but recent polling indicates the Greens’ time in the limelight could be coming to an end.

Gannon should, theoretically, hold onto his seat but it is worth noting that Gannon was first elected as an independent in 2014 prior to being elected as a member of the Social Democrats.

The independent vote that was part of Gannon’s previous voter base could bolt for Daly, but this is compensated by the Social Democrats also set to hoover up a good chunk of disaffected Sinn Féin voters as well as Green voters from 2020.

At a local level, Cat O’Driscoll’s win in Cabra-Glasnevin and Daniel Ennis’ victory in North Inner City (with the party narrowly losing out on a second seat) gives the Soc Dems a bit of a boost heading into November 29.

Labour Senator Marie Sherlock has a not-impossible chance of winning back Joe Costello’s old seat but it would need a lot of things to fall into place.

Dublin Central was one of the key pieces of Labour’s infrastructure to fall in 2016, with Costello losing the Dáil seat he held for nearly 20 years.

His 2020 re-election bid saw the Labour share of the vote fall to 5.4%.

June’s local election results also saw Labour struggle; in Cabra-Glasnevin, their two candidates received a joint 9.2% of the vote which would have been enough to win a seat had they run just one candidate, while their hopes of holding onto Costello’s old council seat in North Inner City saw them win 3.1% of the vote.

Sherlock does have a wildcard up her sleeve however; the old reliable personal vote.

Sherlock was elected as a Senator in 2020, and since her election to the Seanad, she has been documented as speaking on the record in the Seanad over 350 times since then.

As we mentioned in our write-up of Dublin North-West, there is an awful lot of power in the “sure, didn’t they fix the road” vote.

Sherlock played a big part in colleague Aodhán Ó Ríordán’s dark horse European victory back in June, and the black cloud that was over Labour even as recently as this early this year has suddenly lifted.

To put it in other terms, the September 2023 Irish Times poll had Labour polling at 3% in Dublin with Sinn Féin on 34%.

The most recent poll, published in mid-November, now has Labour at 9% in Dublin (some polls have them at over 10%) while Sinn Féin has tumbled to 21%.

June showed that Labour was successful in mopping up the wavering Green vote from 2020, but the same could also be said of the Social Democrats; in any case, Sherlock is on track to improve on Labour’s last two performances in Dublin Central.

Fianna Fáil Senator Mary Fitzpatrick will hope that the fifth time is the charm in her bid for a Dáil seat.

Fianna Fáil hasn’t won a seat in Dublin Central since 2007, back in the Bertie Ahern days.

Fitzpatrick actually received more first preferences and a higher share of the vote than Gary Gannon did in 2020 but transfers proved to be her undoing.

Locally, Fianna Fáil performed below expectations in June with the 21.9% haul from Cabra-Glasnevin in 2019 (where Fitzpatrick was elected on the first count alongside Neasa Hourigan) tumbled to 12.4% in June, and their three-candidate strategy in North Inner City proving to be a disaster.

Fitzpatrick, like Sherlock, has been prolific in her time as a Senator since being elected in 2020 and that could prove useful in securing a loyal personal vote.

As we have proven, a candidate needs both a loyal personal vote and a good party vote locally to get into the Dáil; Fitzpatrick has one of those two qualities and that might not be enough in a hyper-competitive race.

In any case, Dublin Central is sure to be a straightforward, drama-free and certainly not a contentious election race (we only write this so we can will it into existence, for the love of god please just be normal!