How Clontarf really voted

Transfers aren’t exclusive to the likes of Real Madrid or Manchester United.

The Northside went to the polls in June to elect candidates for Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council and as is tradition with Irish elections, transfers did a lot to determine the outcome.

Finding out where voters’ preferences went is key to figuring out the true intent and psychology of the Irish electorate and with a general election coming down the ramp like Mankind in the Attitude era it’s high time we publish our findings.

Clontarf saw the highest turnout out of anywhere in Dublin with 47.8% turnout.

With four different councils voting in Dublin, it was Clontarf that saw the highest turnout out of anywhere in Dublin. 

In Clontarf, a wide spread of candidates from Fine Gael (Naoise Ó Muirí), Fianna Fáil (Deirdre Heney), an independent (Barry Heneghan), the Social Democrats (Catherine Stocker), the Greens (Donna Cooney) and Labour (Ali Field) get elected.

If you noticed that Sinn Féin were missing from that list, congratulations, Columbo will be in touch shortly to add you to his team.

Clontarf saw Sinn Féin run two candidates but both of them placed below People Before Profit and Aontú which is a perfect encapsulation of Sinn Féin’s current electoral woes; they are too seen as too socially conservative for left-wing voters, and they are seen as too left-wing for socially conservative voters.

Both Ó Muirií and Heney were elected on the first count in Clontarf and subsequently saw their surplus distributed in round two.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, previously thought of as the Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez of Irish electoral politics, have proven their 2020 shotgun wedding is actually built on a solid foundation.

Fianna Fáil’s second candidate in Clontarf, Ray Dunne, started on 741 votes after the first count but jumped up to 1120 after receiving transfers from his running mate and Fine Gael.

By virtue of receiving more votes, Ó Muirií’s surpluses were distributed first which instantly put 661 votes into contention.

Dunne received 201 of those votes, Donna Cooney of the Greens received 117, Ali Field of Labour received 102 and Catherine Stocker of the Soc Dems received 96.

Now, for the comedy part.

Fine Gael and People Before Profit are famously different in terms of their ideology and general worldview.

Supporters of one party think the free market is the way forward for Ireland’s economy and that Michael Douglas’ character in Wall Street was actually the good guy.

Members of the other party get really upset when playing Monopoly at Christmas and call you a capitalist pig for putting a hotel on Mayfair.

As stated, they are quite far apart in terms of beliefs.

However, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin also famously hate each other’s guts.

In Clontarf, 21 Fine Gael voters saw fit to give People Before Profit’s Bernard Mulvany their second preference, while giving Sinn Féin’s Paddy Moloney five and Alyssa Ní Bhroin three. 

In Irish politics, especially in a local context, there is a tendency to vote for the person instead of the party (“ah sure, they fixed the roads!”) and the people of Clontarf have proven this point impeccably.

June revealed that Sinn Féin had horrible trouble picking up transfers, and this was proven in Clontarf.

When Mulvany’s race was run, he put 1,286 votes into the wild.

Of that 1,286, Stocker of the Soc Dems picked up 548 which was enough to get elected.

By contrast, Sinn Féin’s remaining candidate in the race, Paddy Moloney, picked up 225.

The race in Clontarf came down to the last round and how James Morris’ of Aontú’s 1,442 votes were distributed.

203 of those went towards Ali Field of Labour and 188 went to Donna Cooney of the Greens, with 169 going towards Moloney.

Most tellingly, 882 of Morris’ votes were non-transfers which indicates a good chunk of Aontú’s voters were one and done, they voted for their guy and that was it.

Sinn Féin not being able to pick up votes from the socially progressive Social Democrats, the economically leftist People Before Profit and the socially conservative Aontú is a sure sign that their 2020 general election base has now gone elsewhere and they now have little time left to rebuild their coalition of voters ahead of a winter general election.

In the run-up to the local elections, Sinn Féin made it clear they wished to appeal to the old school Fianna Fáil voter and sold voters a line about wanting to give everyone an economic leg-up while appearing “tough” on immigration.

So, how did Sinn Féin’s grand proposal to the traditional Fianna Fáil voter pan out in Clontarf?

Well, we don’t need to speculate; after Heney’s surplus of 405 was distributed just 19 of those votes went to Sinn Féin’s two candidates, 52 went to Stocker, 39 went to Cooney, 36 went to Labour and 33 went to independent stalwart Heneghan.

Sinn Féin proved marginally more transfer-friendly when it came time for Stocker’s 305 votes to be distributed; after she was elected on count eight (after jumping up to 10.9% of first preferences compared to 6.8% in 2019), 106 of those went towards Moloney.

99 of those went towards Field and 84 went towards Cooney, with Morris receiving 16.

Seeing how Stocker’s transfers are a little hint of how the Soc Dem voter functions.

Stocker’s share of the vote jumping by 4% while Cooney’s vote dropped by 5.9% is a clear indicator that the Green vote from 2019 and 2020 – the ones that had no intention of voting for Sinn Féin were stung by Labour in the past and have been stung by the Greens since 2020 – have now been swayed by the purple team.

Labour saw a slight drop in their vote in Clontarf compared to 2019 (10.4% to 8.4%) but this was compensated by their transfer-friendliness.

Field received 136 votes after Ó Muirí and Heney were elected, and received an additional 195 votes after Dunne was eliminated, along with the aforementioned Morris transfers getting her over the line.

Labour’s transfer-friendliness could be their ace in the hole come general election time; while the Social Democrats have proven they are incredibly effective in drawing transfers from the left, Labour are equally as adept at picking up transfers from government parties.

Would a similar outcome happen in a general election? It remains to be seen.

Turnout is also lower at local and European elections, because despite being every five years, people were just really bloody busy that day apparently.

To apply a more cynical lens, people decided to stay at home as a form of protest. 

Turnout in Clontarf was 49.3% in 2019 and 67.9% in 2014; a 20% drop in a decade is a sure sign that the local electorate were once tuned in but have since dropped out.