Voting in General Election 2016 gets underway across Galway

D-Day has arrived for 46,000 city voters who go to the polls today to elect five TDs to represent Galway West in Dáil Éireann.

For three weeks of the General Election campaign, the 20 candidates have debated and argued their policies . . . now the people have their say.

After a short campaign, the battle for the hearts and minds of Galway voters shifts to a ground war of ‘getting the vote out’.

The electoral machines will crank into gear as the parties and independents rally their support bases to use their vote and increase turnout.

Candidates will use traditional methods of mobilising maximum support – taxiing voters to polling stations – as well as newer methods of reaching-out to the electorate, such as social media. Although a broadcasting moratorium has kicked-in, it does not include social media or newspapers.

The total electorate in Galway West is 103,704 voters compared with 88,840 in 2011. About half of the extra 15,000 voters can be attributed to the addition of South Mayo to the constituency following the redraw by the independent Boundary Commission.

The Galway West constituency has three parts: Galway city, county and Mayo.

The total electorate in Galway City is 46,157, which includes 426 who were added to the supplementary register in recent weeks.

There are 49,868 voters in Galway County, including all areas in Connemara west of Barna and areas including Oranmore, Turloughmore and Carnmore to the east of the city. Some 387 additional county voters were added to the supplementary register.

Meanwhile, there are 7,697 eligible voters in the new Mayo part of the constituency, which includes Ballinrobe and Shrule.

For lots more coverage of today’s voting, see this week’s Galway City Tribune

We’ll bring you up to the minute coverage of the counts as they progress in all three constituencies on www.ctrib2019.wpengine.com on Facebook and on Twitter @CTribune