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GE11
Revealed: the ten biggest winners and losers of Election 2011
We’ve totted up the figures, quantified the quotas, and worked out the ten most – and least – popular politicians in Ireland.
9.57am, 28 Feb 2011
5.1k
583 CANDIDATES contested this year’s general election, but with only 165 seats up for grabs there were always going to be winners and losers.
Some of the country’s poll-toppers did do extraordinary well, however – coasting home on their first counts with plenty of room to spare – while others, who themselves would have realised election was a very long shot, didn’t do as well as they would have hoped.
Here, ranking them by the number of first preferences they won, are the top ten vote-winners of Election 2011.
As we mentioned, though, for every winner there’s a loser – and with over three times as many candidates as there were seats on offer, some were going to be eliminated earlier than others.
We’re not listing the poorer performers to be put on a pedestal and laughed at – far from it; election candidates come from all different creeds, hues, and backgrounds, and we list them here to celebrate the fact that they chose to run at all.
If the likes of these ten didn’t partake in our elections, Ireland would no doubt be a less healthy democracy than it is today.
Thomas King – The Oranmore farmer ran in Galway West in 2007, and picked up just 60 votes then. Though he was unsuccessful on his second turn, he did at least see an 8 per cent bump in support: he won 65 votes this time around.
Thomas Hollywood – The little-known independent candidate in Dublin Central didn’t make much of an impact on his electorate – he, just as King, won just 65 votes.
Robert Glynn – The economics student and former IT salesman ran in Louth on a platform of withdrawing Ireland from the Euro, but failed to capture local imaginations – he took 61 votes in Louth.
Michael Pat Cox – The first time independent in Laois-Offaly in a minister of the Irish Orthodox and Apostolic Church – better known as the man who ordained Sinéad O’Connor in 1999 – managed to take 60 votes.
Matt Larkin – 38-year-old independent who had previously run in local elections in Limerick City nobly decided not to erect campaign posters, saying his campaign didn’t have the money to waste on them. Sadly, his exposure suffered and he won just 59 first preference.
Liam Johnston – The Fís Nua candidate ran in Dublin Central on an anti-war ticket, also seeking to reduce the Dáil to 130 members. His campaign ended early, however, taking just 48 first preferences.
Seán Forkin – The first-time independent in Mayo, a farmer by profession, was among the many overswept by the Fine Gael wave in his constituency. He won the top preference of 29 voters.
John Keigher – Regular readers will recognise the name; in a Daily Fix last week we included his epic typewriter-made photocopied manifesto. Sadly, it didn’t give the Ranelagh barrister much exposure: he took just 27 first preferences in Dublin South East.
Benny Cooney – The independent ran in both Dublin Central and Longford-Westmeath, on a platform of Seanad abolition and protection for mortgage holders. He won 130 votes in the latter constituency, but managed just 25 in the capital.
Peadar Ó Ceallaigh – The media studies graduate and qualified building surveyor ran to publicise the Oisin Trust, which hopes to establish a trust fund for children with disabilities. His promise to donate 50 per cent of his wages to the trust sadly didn’t bring him home, but he is a champion in his own right: his campaign in Dublin South East won him 18 first preferences.
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“Lizard Squad the group behind the attacks, appears to have suffered its own security issues”…. Ah No Quinton. The 18year old probably didn’t have a clue how to Hash/Encrypt passwords, just some script kiddie!
Hardly a security issue. I’d would imagine he used something like Visual Basic to make the program.
What does that say about Sony & Microsoft when a script kiddy with a poor understanding of security can perform ddos on a major service provider?
It is basic security to have routers, software or firewalls which can recognise a ddos and start blocking the IP addresses of those infected/attacking
Routers and firewalls have limited bandwidth and if that bandwidth is exceeded you will have connection issues. That’s what happens in most DDoS’s so blocking the DoSing IP’s isn’t going to help. Some services such as CloudFlare can handle the huge bandwidth spikes caused by many DDoS’s so for a few quid you can outsource your DDoS protection to them for less than the cost of extra bandwidth that would offset the attack.
That’s just it though, their servers are adequate and probably fairly robust, but at the same time, when you have 90,000 fans from Cork and Kilkenny coming up to dublin for a hurling match then and you’re trying to walk down O’Connell street…. multi factor authentication would cut this out or at least stem it, but might make it a pain in the hole to implement.
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