As an electoral geographer who is interested in the minutiae of geographical variations in support patterns for political parties and candidates, there is nothing I enjoy more than finding a delicious set of tally figures in a local media (whether print or online) in the weeks after a General Election or Local Election contest.
I’ll be honest, European elections do not excite me to the same degree.
Over the past decades, a tradition has developed of publishing tally figures in local papers in certain parts of the states, most notably the North Midlands, North-West, West and South-West, but this was not the case for other areas, or for specific constituencies, including the old Laois-Offaly constituency.
However, LaoisToday has published tally figures for Laois for the most recent General Election and Local Election contests.
Given the changes in personnel and party affiliations, in addition to factoring in the boundary changes involving Portarlington and the north-east of the county, the tally figures for the 2020 General Election do not offer definitive guidance as to how voting may pan out in the Laois constituency in a few days’ time.
But these do offer some interesting trends, which was worth noting.
Looking at the support trends for the 2020 General Election (Figure 1), the impact of the Sinn Féin surge and a very strong local performance by Brian Stanley is readily evident.
Stanley topped the poll in Laois-Offaly but won a much higher share of the vote in Laois (31.9%) than he did in Offaly (17.2%).
Portarlington found itself in Kildare South (along with Ballybrittas, Killenard and Jamestown) in the 2020 election, due to a misguided decision made in the 2017 Constituency Commission report (“a day that will live in infamy”).
The then Sinn Féin candidate, Patrica Ryan, also fared well in Portarlington, winning 30% of the first preference votes in the town, although she finished second in Portarlington (and indeed in the rest of that chunk of north-east Laois which found itself on the wrong side of the constituency boundary in 2020) to non-party candidate, Cathal Berry, who won 40.4% of the first preference votes in Portarlington.
Brian Stanley polled well in his hometown of Portlaoise (36.3%) and won close to 3,000 votes in the town itself, as would be expected based on the ‘friends and neighbours’ effect.
However, the increased level of local competition in ‘The Town’, which was also the home base of other candidates such as Noel Tuohy (Labour) and Charlie Flanagan (Fine Gael), meant that his share of the vote in Portlaoise was not as high as in some of the other Laois towns, such as Graiguecullen (43.8%) and Mountrath (40.1%).
The Stanley vote, that being said, was very high in some polling boxes in Portlaoise, such as the first two boxes in Knockmay; Knockmay NS Booth 2 (65.8%) and Knockmay NS Booth 1 (64%).
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael traditionally dominated General Election contests in Laois-Offaly, as noted in the previous article, but won just over half the votes cast (50.2%) in the part of Laois that fell within Laois-Offaly.
The combined Laois vote for both parties (47.2%) was even lower when the part of the county that was voting in Kildare South was included, with Fianna Fáil winning 27.8% of the first preference votes in Laois while Fine Gael won 19.4%.
Both parties struggled to win votes in Portarlington, with Fianna Fáil commanding just 10.8% of the first preference votes there, while Fine Gael won just 7.7%.
Looking at the different towns in Laois, Fianna Fáil won their highest vote share in Mountrath (32.7%), the town located closest to Sean Fleming’s Castletown base, while the town in which Fine Gael fared best was Rathdowney (24.9%).
Apart from Portarlington, the towns in which the two parties fared least well in were Mountmellick (20.3%) for Fianna Fáil and Graiguecullen for Fine Gael (14.1%), while Fine Gael also just won over 15% of the vote in Mountrath (15.4%).
The best polling station in Laois for Fianna Fail was Castletown Booth No. 1 (60.1%), while the highest vote share for Fine Gael came in Camross Booth No.2 (40.8%).
SEE ALSO – Adrian Kavanagh Column: From 1977 to 2020 – a history of how Laois (and Laois-Offaly) voted in General Elections
