IT WAS A CLIFFHANGER!
Marathon two day count in Sligo / Leitrim constituency sees shocks
SLIGO/LEITRIM saw the Sinn Féin surge just like the rest of the country with its sole candidate, Martin Kenny (pictured above) from near Ballinamore topping the poll and being elected on the first count with nearly three thousand votes to spare on Sunday night.
The party’s vote went up from 17.81% at the 2016 general election to 24.78% at the week-end reflective of the countrywide swing in support to the party which must be pondering now why it had pulled its other candidate in the constituency, Cllr Chris MacManus early in the campaign.
Independent Marian Harkin also had a comfortable victory, turning back the clock to 2002 when she was last elected in the constituency, taking the second seat.The count finished up close to midnight on Sunday and resumed on Monday morning and it was in the late evening when the final three seats were filled.
Fianna Fáil’s Marc MacSharry took the third seat but his running mate and also an outgoing TD, Eamon Scanlon was in a real battle with Fine Gael’s Frank Feighan for the last seat. The election saw the Fianna Fáil first preference vote down from from 32.37 % in 2016 to 25.47 %.
There were fears that Fine Gael could end up with no seat in Sligo/Leitrim which would have been history in the making but outgoing Senator Feighan hung in and was picking up plenty of transfers to make him favourite to win a seat for the party which saw its other candidate, Thomas Walsh poll just 4,760 first preference votes. The party first preference vote fell from 27.67 % in 2016 to just 16.64%.
Sinn Féin’s surge in popularity across the country was reflected in the constituency of Sligo/Leitrim as sitting TD Martin Kenny romped home to be elected in the first count with over 15,000 votes on Sunday night, almost 3,000 over the quota.
Kenny cut a relaxed figure as he strolled around the count centre at The Sligo Park Hotel all day on Sunday, waiting for the inevitable.
It had become apparent on Saturday night that Sinn Féin would enjoy a much improved showing at this year’s General Election, and an exit poll conducted by IT Sligo and Ocean FM on Saturday showed Kenny as the candidate with the most votes.
While Kenny had, in truth, expected to retain his Dáil seat with some comfort, not even he could have foreseen the change in opinion that would see him race in front.
“I knew, to be honest a couple of weeks ago when I was going well and from what I could see on the streets that we were doing well.
“Maybe I was thinking in the back of my head we could top the poll. A couple of us had discussed it but said we’d not say it in case we jinxed it,” he told The Sligo Champion.
“As it got closer it was building and building. I was confident enough that we were going to do very well.
“Getting in excess of 20% I figured was going to be very hard done because it was such a competitive field. I have 3,000 of a surplus so I’m just delighted with that,” Kenny added.
Such is the popularity of Kenny and indeed his party in Donegal, the Aughavas based TD won 47% of the vote in South Donegal.
Although, the polls showed huge support for the sitting TD in Sligo, winning 18% of the vote, ahead of Fianna Fáil’s Marc MacSharry who won 15% of the vote.
He says it’s a vote for change, and he feels that voters are placing their confidence and trust in Sinn Féin.
“It’s a huge achievement, we have a huge team of workers out on the ground across the whole constituency, we got the highest vote in Donegal. That’s massive.
“On top of that, across Sligo town, in many of the booths we were topping the poll as well.
“It’s down to the work on the ground including our councillors who have worked very hard for the past number of months,” he said.
He added: “Really I think this is a vote for change, it’s a vote for things to be done differently, for different priorities to be put in place, to prioritise communities and families and workers. That’s what we need to do. When I go back into Leinster House that’s what I’ ll be trying to make sure happens.
“We need to look after our health services and all those things we talk about. The big one for the North West is we need jobs here, we need development, we need investment in this region. We need to ensure that our children have a future here.
“Young Ireland has spoken. A lot of people who voted for change are young people. They were people who also came out in the marriage quality referendum, in the eighth amendment referendum and they have also come out in this and said they want a better Ireland for themselves and their children.”
Kenny would like a ministerial position, ‘who wouldn’t’ he says, although when pressed on which one he would prefer, he did not wish to say.
Speculation continues over who will be in Government, and what form the next Government will take. With Sinn Féin ahead in the early hours of the election, Kenny is refusing to rule out anything.
“I would rule nothing out. I think there has been a swing to Sinn Féin but there’s also been a rap on the knuckles for what would be considered the two main parties in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and after this election I would say they’re not the two main parties anymore. Times have changed. We will now be a in a pole position to make change. Everyone needs to sit up and listen.”
On the question of whether or not the party will live to regret not running two candidates in this constituency, namely Chris MacManus alongside Kenny, he does not feel that the party would have won two seats here in Sligo/Leitrim.
“It could go either way. In truth, to get two elected in a four seater is a difficult thing. You’d have to be very lucky on transfers, which we could be. In hindsight, maybe we should have. But coming into the election we were looking at opinion polls which had us much lower. We had a bad election in the local elections last year where our vote had dropped. We erred on the side of caution. I honestly don’t think we would be in a position to take two seats in this election but we will be in the future.”
The entrance of Fianna Fáil’s Shane Ellis to the election did have an impact on Kenny’s votes, as he says that his vote was down in parts of Leitrim where Ellis would have enjoyed the bulk of the vote. Kenny paid tribute to those who put their name on the ballot paper, whether they were successful or not. After all, he knows what it’s like to lose out.
“It’s always a good day when you come to an election and succeed. I’ve been to many’s the count down the years, I went to several where I was standing on the platform congratulating others on getting elected and not making it myself. I know what that feels like. You err and fall short from time to time but you have to pull yourself together and get up and at it again, that’s what I would encourage everyone else to do.”
“The big picture will be about what we do with the huge mandate that we’ve got. It looks like Sinn Fein is going to be taking in excess of 35 seats. That is really a mandte for change. I would hope that we would look at forming a Government or being part of a government that could deliver that change, if that’s possible. But certainy we won’t be going into a government that’s delivering something whcih would be falling short of what people expect. There is time ahead of negotiation but I would hope to be part of delivering a better future for everyone in the north west.”