The all-time shocker – when a poll-topper ended up missing a D‡il seat

Date Published: {J}

Thanks to the extraordinary talents of the tallymen – and the tallywomen! – we should have a fair indicator as early at noon on Saturday next as to exactly where the seats are going in Galway West and Galway East.

However, there was one historic occasion when it all went wrong in Galway West . . . the best predictions on the first count proved to be horribly wrong in what may still rank as the biggest turn-up for the electoral formbook. It happened in 1954.

However, more of that later. On Saturday we may have to wait quite a while for any real indicator of the destination of the fifth and final Dáil seat in Galway West – for there is such a list of Independent and other candidates, all of whom are capable of getting a significant vote but not winning a seat, that the decision on the final seat could have all the suspense of an Alfred Hitchcock plot.

The first thing the tallymen will be able to tell on Saturday within the first bunch of boxes being opened will be where the party vote support is headed. Whether it’s Taylor’s Hill or Tullykyne, the tallymen will have comparable box-by-box figures for the 2007 General Election and will quickly be able to compare all party performance.

In the first hours of the opening and sorting of ballot boxes, the tallymen will also fairly quickly be able to calculate just how many Quotas the parties have secured. In a five seater constituency (Galway West), the Quota (votes needed to win a seat) works out at 16.6%. In a four-seater (such as Galway East), the Quota is 20%.

Now, some seats are filled at the end of a count without the candidate reaching a Quota, but the rough number of Quotas a party has in a constituency is the best guide to how many seats they will get. In other words, if Fine Gael come up with two Quotas in Galway West between their four candidates, then they will win two seats. As the late Christy Dooley used to say, it might take hours, or days, of counting, but win them they will.

If, for instance, the Fianna Fáil vote were to show signs of dropping in areas, the tallymen will be the first to confirm it . . . though watch out for the kind of speculative nonsense which tries to tell within a matter of a few hours just how individuals are performing.

As someone who has been an ‘anorak’ at any number of election counts as far back as 1965, there are always those rafts of early rumours about “so and so’s vote has collapsed”. Four hours later you discover that the boxes in the candidate’s home areas had not even been opened and when they ‘came in’, the picture became very different indeed.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.