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Dublin South-Central
There is a by-election due in Dublin South-Central as a result of the death of the Labour TD, Pat Upton. The
is the second by-election in the constituency in recent years. In the 1992 general election, Ben Briscoe
of Fianna Fail took the last seat from Eric Byrne of Democratic Left by just 5 votes. In the 1994 by-election in
the constituency, Eric Byrne easily regained his seat, only to lose it again in the 1997 general election.
Based on the figures, the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail candidates are the most likely winners of the by-election.
However, by-elections tend to be rather random affairs, with the result of the previous election not being much
of a guide to the result. The following graph shows party support in the constituency at the last election (with
Democratic Left votes added to the Labour Party total)
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Socialist Workers Party 0.54% |
Election Database can predict the result of the by-election - in Predict mode, select Dublin South-Central
(use the 2002 Dail constituencies, as these incorporate the merger of Labour and Democratic Left). Load
in a transfer matrix or edit the default matrix. Press the B/E button - this applies the transfer matrix to the
constituency, while also reducing the constituency size to a single seat and generating a single candidate for each party.
Some might feel that holding a by-election is unfair to the smaller parties, but this has not proved to be the case in practice.
Only 5 of the last 10 by-elections have been won by Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
In Tasmania, which also uses STV, they have a countback system to avoid by-elections. If a by-election is caused
by the death or resignation of a member of a party, then if one or more candidates from that party failed to be elected
and if at least one of them is willing to take up the seat, then the votes of the candidate being replaced are examined,
and the new representative is elected from them. However, in Tasmania, the normal practice is for parties to nominate
4 or 5 candidates in each constituency (all constituencies have 5 seats), something which is quite rare in the Republic,
except in 2-county constituencies like Cavan-Monaghan and Laois-Offaly.
Dublin South-Central is currently a 4-seat constituency but it will have 5 seats in the next general election. In the last 2
general elections, the result was FF 2 FG 1 Lab 1 (although Labour would have won a second seat in 1992 simply by
putting up a second candidate). Based on the results on the last Dail election, the extra seat should
go to whichever of FG or Labour have the stronger second candidate. However, in the last election, FF's 3 candidates were
very close on first preference votes. If FF can maintain this in the next election, then they could pick up 3 of the 5 seats if
they get close to 40% of first preference votes, just as the managed in Cork North-Central and Cork South-Central in 1997.
However, a pre-election transfer pact between FG and Labour would put paid to this.
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