Ros-Galway: 1st Count: Naughten romps home

While the outcome was never in doubt, the scale of the victory of Roscommon’s loyal crusader Denis Naughten raised more than a few eyebrows among political stalwarts as he romped home in the frustratingly slow first count of the Roscommon-Galway constituency.

Naughten won 13,936 first preference votes, easily reaching the quota of 11,421 with a turnout of 71.6%.

Fellow independent Michael Fitzmaurice was next in line, with 9,750 votes, making him next in line to take a seat in the three-seater which will see him on the cusp of election on the second count, but more likely to take a third.

The race is now on this evening for the third seat between Fine Gael’s Maura Hopkins, a Roscommon County Councillor and occupational therapist,  and Eugene Murphy for Fianna Fáil, also a county councillor and Shannonside FM presenter and producer with just a single vote between them.

Hopkins polled 6,812, while Murphy shaded it with 6,813.

The victor will all depend on where the transfers from Naughten fall, with tallies declaring no set pattern for any particular candidate.

Nobody was eliminated so attention will now turn to distributing all of Naughten’s 2,515 surplus votes.

Denis Naughten, 42, was first elected to the Seanad at a by-election in 1997 when the seat was vacated upon the death of his father Liam. Later that year he won a seat to the Dáil for the Longford-Roscommon constituency. He topped the poll in 2011 with 19.6% of the first-preference vote while a member of Fine Gael.

His repeat performance, this time as an independent, follows his departure from the party due to their failure to keep the emergency department in Roscommon Hospital open as they had promised to do in the run-up to the last general election.

His toll-topping performance this time around is widely regarded as a vote of supreme gratitude and a kick in the butt for the former party of the native of Drum, near Ballinasloe, who has made Roscommon town his home.

In 2013 he and six others, including Lucinda Creighton, expelled from the main parties formed the Reform Alliance but it was dissolved before the election was called.