82,000 new voters on the register
A RECORD number of new voters on the 2018 electoral register represents a significant boost for the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment.
A surge of 82,895 new voters – overwhelmingly young people who have reached the age of 18 – have increased the pool of registered voters in comparison to 2015.
Some 12,000 of the new intake are based in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, which has shown itself in successive referendums to be one of the most liberal constituency in the country.
There are now 3,229,672 eligible voters in the Republic, an all-time high.
This is nearly 83,000 voters more than the 3,146,777 who were registered in 2015.
The detailed breakdown of individual constituency registers confirm what census analysis by the Central Statistics Office already shows – that there has been a drift of population from rural, conservative areas to the east coast and the cities, which tend towards more liberal outcomes in referenda.
Roscommon, for instance, the only constituency to reject the same-sex marriage referendum, has suffered a fall in population – but exact comparisons are not available because of changes in the boundaries of the constituencies. Mayo, another conservative county, has seen its population of electors drop from 96,679 in 2015 to 89,783 now.
All in all, the demographic changes are likely to benefit the Yes campaign.
The new figures were provided to the Irish Daily Mail by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government yesterday and are publicly disclosed here for the first time. Local authorities revised their electoral registers around the country in February, and they have now been collated into a central register. But voters can still get their name on a supplementary register in order to vote on May 25.
The total electorate of some 3.23million does not include those who subsequently apply for inclusion in the supplements.
Eligible voters who are not on the register and who wish to vote at the referendum should complete a supplementary register application form, which is available from city or county councils.
Anyone in any doubt about their eligibility or the registration of qualified members of your family, can check online at checktheregister.ie. Completed registration forms must be received by the registration authority by Tuesday, May 8.