Vote Or Die!

Andy Williams makes a strong case for Christmas being the most wonderful time of the year, but for me it’s election time. Like Christmas I get positively giddy at the prospect of the debate,  rolling coverage, facts and figures and general bonkers ephemera that elections provide, and on Saturday morning when I get up to radio and TV coverage of local and European elections, I may as well be playing with a train set or some such. Frightfully nerdy, yes, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But while I value the significance of voting immensely, I have to say I’m not very good at it. Well, at least as regards picking the winner is concerned. My first general election two tears ago, I was one of 2.79% Labour voters in the constituency. The man I voted for the Senate  got less votes in a nationwide election than I did running for Youth Council in five schools in east Donegal. I was rather fond of the Lisbon Treaty, actually. But while I’m dreadful as regards picking winners, I do fancy myself a bit as a pundit, and at the risk of making an ass out of myself in a style similar to one of those American spiritualists who claim to talk to people’s dead aunts in big auditoriums, here’s my thruppeny bit…

North West:

My old stomping ground is an odd mix of loony orthodoxy, with FF and FG always guaranteed a seat on one hand and yet that rural independent streak always tends to throw the odd curveball on the other. Dana worked the bonkers vote to the hilt back in 1999, but she was ousted by the considerably more liberal independent Marian Harkin. Chances are she’ll keep her seat, despite the presence of the latest maverick in town, the Dana-endorsed Declan Ganley. Being at the forefront of the Lisbon Treaty’s No Campaign hasn’t translated into big money prizes for the multi-millionaire anti-elitist, and he’ll probably be doing well to tip 10%. A much more likely challenge will come from that other leading Lisbon light, Sinn Féin, although Padraig MacLochlainn’s chances effectively ended the minute his fellow Donegalese Pat “The Cope” Gallagher decided to run. The Cope will get a seat, but the decision for him to run smacks of robbing Peter to pay Paul: His return to Brussels will precipitate a by-election, and the current state of the FF party in south west Donegal is like something J.B. Keane would’ve wrote, all leading towards an uncomfortable high-noon  for the government.

South:

One of the few places where Fianna Fáil won’t look too embarrassed statistically because of Brian Crowley’s personal popularity, but he’s the only thing going for them here, as Ned O’Keefe will wish he’d forgot to send in his declaration forms. Fine Gael have an interesting internal battle for their seat, with GAA superstar Sean Kelly likely to topple incumbent Colm Burke. The final seat is an intriguing battle between Labour’s Alan Kelly, Sinn Féin’s Taoireasa Ferris and sitting MEP Kathy Sinnott, which will all hinge on the musical chairs of multiple counts. Sinnott is the most likely casualty of that tussle and good feeling for Labour might just push Kelly over the edge.

East:

Labour momentum will be a factor in Nessa Childers’ likely election to Europe too, which will cause all manner of consternation in Fine Gael. Their current two seats was a bit of an unsustainable fluke to begin with, but any party expecting 40% odd of the vote and only get one seat for their trouble will feel rather aggrieved. Mairead McGuinness’ vote tally may prove embarrasingly big when her running mate John Paul Phelan loses out. Liam Aylward will survive with a seat, but it won’t be easy.

Dublin:

If the east is a bit of a dull contest, it’s anything but in the capital. Shrinking from 4 to 3 seats means one of the incumbents will lose out and, incomprehensibly, FF’s Eoin Ryan is the favourite to go. Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein is vulnerable, and much-loved Socialist Joe Higgins all of a sudden seems a fair shot. The bellicose Gay Mitchell is a dead cert, as is the bearded Proinseas de Rossa, but the third seat is all over the place. My instinct is that Ryan will do better than expected and Higgins slightly worse, but if left wing transfers from de Rossa and former Green MEP Patricia McKenna go his way he could pull away from McDonald, leapfrogging Ryan at the last minute.

Dublin is also witness to two by-elections in Dublin South and Central. In South George Lee looks likely to cash in on his celebrity status and commanding knowledge of economics, but Central is rather more inscrutable. Maurice Ahern may stop some of the bleeding in the constituency his brother effectively rules, but he won’t win either. It could be any of Labour’s Ivana Bacik, Fine Gael’s Paschal Donohue and Sinn Féin’s Christy Burke to take the seat, and trying to analyse placings and potential transfers is harder than organising an orchestra of cats. Six to five and pick ‘em, as Leo McGarry would say.

Northern Ireland:

Unionists seem intent on eating their young of late. The DUP is suffering from clusters of defections from within, the Traditional Unionist Voice from without, and a candidate in Diane Dodds who tops obnoxiousness polls if little else. Her appalling display in a BBC debate with arch-enemy Jim Allister, himself hardly a beacon of moderation, where they tore lumps out of each other over who was the most dedicated to Unionist fundamentalism, left a nasty taste in the mouth, not to mention bringing up memories of a kind of political posture that should have no place in modern Northern politics. Allister and Dodds don’t deserve to have a larnyx, much less a vote in this campaign. That in-fighting on the right wing of Unionism plays completely into the hands of not just the Sinn Féin bogeymen but the UUP’s Jim Nicholson, who’s also a partial Tory now apparently. His quiet, dignified manner will probably see him become the only Unionist voice elected this time around, with the SDLP’s Alban Maginnis benefitting from both transfers from the Alliance and Greens and the chasmic Unionist vote.

See, I’d never have got 1,000 words out of writing about Christmas. Incidentally, if the above is proved to be completely wrong, someone has vandalised the post. Ahem.