Sinn Féin falls flat in hugely ambitious local election strategy

As ballot boxes were opened in local election count centres around the country on Saturday morning an early picture began to emerge that alarmed Sinn Féin strategists.

Party figures, looking over the shoulders of tallymen and tallywomen, saw a pattern indicating that many of the party’s second, third and fourth candidates were polling poorly and well below expectations. They appeared to be losing votes, in the main, to a raft of Independent candidates. Even in working-class areas in Dublin where Sinn Féin would have had high hopes the same trend was becoming evident.

By Saturday evening it was clear that the scale of Sinn Féin’s ambition – and they were hugely ambitious running 335 candidates nationwide – was seriously misjudged.

With final seats being filled across the country last night the party will look to certain key constituencies and ask how they got it so wrong ahead of the next general election.

One area where the Sinn Féin strategy misfired spectacularly was Dublin.

In Donaghmede, where Fine Gael’s Tom Brabazon topped the poll, Sinn Féin’s Mícheál MacDonncha was elected on the last count with 7.3 per cent of the first preference vote. Their two other candidates missed out, both taking between 4.7 per cent and 4.9 per cent of the first preference vote.

In Clontarf neither of the party’s two candidates were elected.

In the North Inner City Janice Boylan was elected on the 12th count with 843 votes. Their other two candidates took only between 2.7 per cent and 2.9 per cent of the first preference vote.

In the South East Inner City Kenny Courtney was elected on the ninth count with 498 votes, but again the other two Sinn Féin candidates were unsuccessful.

In Pembroke no Sinn Féin councillor was elected. In fact candidate Martin Robert won only 383 votes.

In Kimmage-Rathmines neither of the two Sinn Féin candidates were elected.

In Cabra-Glasnevin, the home turf of party leader Mary Lou McDonald, Fine Gael were outpolling Sinn Féin in a development which the party will find hugely embarrassing.

In Clondalkin, where the party ran four candidates for seven seats, Independent Francis Timmons topped the poll, while People Before Profit candidate Darragh Adelaide was initially also polling ahead of them.

In Palmerstown-Fonthill, where the party ran four candidates for only five seats, Fianna Fáil’s Shane Moynihan was taking 13.9 per cent of the first preference vote, with Independent Alan Hayes not far behind.

In Tallaght South, where the party ran three candidates in a contest for five seats, Independent Patrick Pearse Holohan topped with poll with 21.8 per cent of the first preference vote, with Fine Gael candidate Baby Pereppadan elected on the second count with 1,172 votes.

The sheer scale of Sinn Féin’s ambition on South Dublin County Council was always astonishing. The party wanted to go from four seats to 21, but will not come near this.

This is also an area that, were this a general election, would encompass Dublin Mid-West, where the party won two seats in the last general election, led by Eoin Ó Broin.

Sinn Féin had been eyeing up three-candidate strategies in constituencies around the country for the general election, and it may or may not alter this following a review of these local election results.

Ambitions and hopes were high in Tipperary too, where Sinn Féin had three seats previously and were running 11 candidates. Instead the party won just two seats in what will be a major disappointment, with many of the candidates polling poorly.

Final results for a large number of other constituencies were still coming through on Sunday night, but the picture has largely been the same around the country although there were, of course, success stories.

In Monaghan the party’s gamble of fielding its highest ever number of candidates in Monaghan paid off with eight candidates elected. The party also reclaimed the seat Noel Connell lost in 2019 in Cavan with the party’s councillor Damien Brady re-elected.

Sinn Féin was also back in Co Offaly after a 2019 wipeout, with first-timer Aoife Masterson winning a seat in Tullamore on the fourth count.