Ongar, apart from sounding like one of Schwarzenegger’s foes in Conan The Barbarian, is one of the constituencies to watch in June’s local elections.
In 2019, Sinn Féin man Paul Donnelly topped the poll in the newly-created constituency, before repeating the same trick just under a year later at a wider level in the 2020 general election in Dublin West.
The 5-seater will be widely dependant on how Sinn Féin performs, and transfers will decide the rest.
Going off results from 2014 (when the constituency was part of Mulhaddart) and 2019 (when it was newly created), Ongar has one of the strongest anti-Government votes in Ireland at a local level.
In the 2014 locals, when Ongar was part of Mulhuddart, Paul Donnelly and the Anti-Austerity Alliance candidate Ruth Coppinger secured 49% of first preferences between them.
The 2014 locals were a snapshot of how Irish voters felt on that day in May, with austerity on voters’ minds as they went to the polls.
Candidates under the Anti-Austerity Alliance banner secured 26.1% of first preferences between them.
The political landscape of 2024 is quite different compared to the one of 2014, but it is unlikely that someone who was anti-austerity a decade ago is now suddenly singing the praises of the free market.
Now that Ongar is flying solo as a constituency in its own right, 26% is a lorra lorra votes that makes a galaxy of difference when you’re talking about a 5-seater.
Paul Donnelly topped the poll in 2019 with 21.1% of first preferences, foreshadowing his poll-topping performance in the following year’s general election.
Taina Doyle, co-opted onto Fingal County Council as an Anti-Austerity Alliance member in 2015 before running as an independent in 2019, finished second with 15%.
The top two candidates securing 36% of first preferences between them is a clue of what to expect in June.
In 2019, housing, health and climate were the top issues on voters’ minds.
In 2024, housing, immigration and in the context of Ongar, travel, are the top issues among voters.
Sinn Féin will run two candidates in June, with Angela Donnelly looking to secure a full-term mandate following her co-option onto Fingal County Council in 2022, and first-time candidate Declan Cairns will also be hoping that the Sinn Féin faithful turn out to secure a seat for him.
Sinn Féin ran two candidates in 2019, but their 2nd candidate on the day, Marian Buckley, secured 2.5% of first preferences.
The party can be assured of at least one seat here, with Donnelly well-placed to secure a full term on Fingal County Council; the jury is out on there being enough in the tank to secure a second seat.
Fianna Fáil will run two candidates here in June; the incumbent Tom Kitt and newcomer Ali Asad.
Kitt secured election in 2019 as a first-time candidate and pulled a more-than-decent 11% of first preferences on his way to securing election.
Fianna Fáil having confidence to bring in a running mate for Kitt is an interesting wrinkle in the race; they only ran one candidate in 2019 but have apparent confidence in running two in June.
With Fine Gael scooping over 12% in first preferences in 2019, it’s not hard to see what voter base Fianna Fáil are trying to target.
Dublin 15 is of course the home turf of junior Minister Jack Chambers (and lest we forget, former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister Roderic O’Gorman) but West Dublin is one of the strongest areas for the party as a whole.
June’s results will be put under the microscope by every think tank and political analyst – if it appears that Sinn Féin are making inroads with the traditional Fianna Fáil voter base it could prove a vital clue in cracking the next general election.
Conversely, if Fianna Fáil can be successful in keeping Sinn Féin at bay that could provide a template for the party to follow at the next general election.
Keeping on Government parties, the Greens winning a seat here in 2019 was also foreshadowing the party clicking with voters at the 2020 general election.
Depending on who you ask, the Greens’ 2nd stint in Government has been just as ruinous as the first and reinforced all the jokes you’ve heard about them being yuppies who will accept austerity in exchange for more bike lanes or the party is the moral conscience of the current coalition that is carrying out exactly what their voter base asks of them.
The Green experiment will come under the spotlight in June, and losing their Ongar seat will be a sign that their voter coalition that brought them great success in 2019 and 2020 has abandoned them.
In any case, the recently co-opted Michelle Griffin will look to secure a full term on FCC in June and will be inheriting a healthy 8.7% of first preferences.
The projected drop Green vote – as well as sweet transfers from Sinn Féin’s candidates and Doyle – will lift the boat for Labour and the Social Democrats.
Labour will be running Nekesa Nancy Khisa in the constituency, the former vice president for welfare and equality at TU Dublin.
Labour got a candidate elected in 2014 when the constituency was known as Mulhuddart and was unlucky not to get a second candidate elected.
The Social Democrats will be running Ellen Murphy here in June, and the Clonsilla resident is running a campaign to pressure FCC and the Department of Housing to deliver more affordable housing for the rising Dublin 15 population.
June will be a big test for the Social Democrats with the party seemingly looking to occupy the same spot Labour did in Irish politics 20 years ago; to quote Highlander, there can only be one (at least as far as Ongar is concerned.)
Speaking of parties looking to prove themselves in June, Aontú announced their candidate last October.
Gerard Sheehan will be the name on the ballot for Aontú, who have surprising form in Dublin 15.
Trying to figure out how Aontú does is tricky as analysts are only operating on 2 sets of election results, the 2019 locals when they had just formed and the 2020 general election where they performed as expected for a new party.
Their 2019 performance around Dublin 15 indicates that there may or may not be a groundswell of support for Sinn Féin with a touch of social conservatism, or it could just be a mirage.
The party took 7% of first preferences here in 2019 which is a solid base to build on.
At that stage, Aontú had only been a party for a few months so for the party to attain that kind of result while starting from scratch is decent; time will tell if they can go one better in June.
June will be the true test of Aontú’s electoral prowess and will be a sign of where they get their transfers from – do they attract votes and transfers from socially conservative Sinn Féin voters? Do they take support away from Fianna Fáil? Do people just like the name?
Aontú have long framed themselves as the social conservative party of choice but that may or may not be complicated by news that the Irish Freedom Party are running in Ongar.
In national polling, the mystical “independents and others” figure can be interpreted as parties such as the Irish Freedom Party who aren’t polling well enough to feature by themselves, but are polling at less than 1% and are lumped into that broad church.
In a 5-seater, every little percentage point counts, so losing a few dozen votes to another socially conservative party might annoy Aontú.
5-seaters are generally less kind to smaller parties, so Aontú may well rue the day a more explicitly socially conservative party got approved by the electoral commission.
On the other end of the scale, Aoife Coppinger, niece of Ruth, is running for the Socialist Party under the Solidarity – People Before Profit banner.
Coppinger is in her early 20s and will look to begin another generation of Coppinger’s in elected office.
While her famous aunt is running in Castleknock, Coppinger will be looking to secure a seat of her own in Ongar.
The Solidarity branch of the party were squeezed out of the final seat by Fianna Fáil and the Greens despite scooping 8.7% of first preferences in 2019; that should serve as motivation enough for the party to go one better come June.
A member of ROSA, the student stated that she wanted to make politics accessible for people of her generation, and wants to use the platform of local politics to help young people get organised and engaged in the political process.
Turnout has hovered below the 40% mark in the last two local elections when Ongar residents went to the polls; if Coppinger can harness an untapped youth vote then she may well cause as big of a political earthquake as her aunt did 10 years ago.
The local 39A bus that serves Ongar might have a habit of vanishing like a ghost, but the electoral race in Ongar is anything but haunting.