Dublin Central by-election

[culloty82]

Now that Pascal Donohue has packed his bags for Washington, the resultant by-election looks an absolute bearpit. Sinn Féin would have to start as clear favourites, being Mary Lou's home turf, the only major reservation being the lack of an obvious candidate (could Lynn Boylan be parachuted in from Strasbourg?). Fine Gael currently possess the Dublin Lord Mayor in Ray McAdam, but aside from FF, they don't have an obvious source of transfers, and three of the current four TDs are from the left. If there is to be a surprise, it could come from the Social Democrats, who have an inner city councillor in Daniel Ennis, and can expect to hoover up preferences from Labour, the Greens and some PBP votes. Malachy Steenson will pick up a big chunk of Hutch FPVs (assuming the Monk doesn't run this time), but leapfrogging everyone to election seems improbable, and the transfers of PBP's Eoghan O'Ceannabháin could prove pivotal to the final result.

[Eminence Grise]

FF and FG are unlikely to be transfer friendly except between themselves and there's no really obvious high profile candidate for either. The left will fragment: SF, SocDem, Lab and the GP has a seat but not running against each other. For SF, Janice Boylan is the logical choice: sitting councillor, polled c1200 FPs last time round (iirc). She could get Mary Lou's votes. Of course, Mary Lou might not want a second SF TD splitting the poll when both run next time around... True of all the parties, that. The hard right also likely to split the vote with multiple patriots jostling for a place – Steenson has an outside chance if he has a clear field and can make enough noise to get the protest vote. As those who should be doing hard time… that’s the great unknown. But the government has six months before polling day and there’s a lot that could happen between now and then.