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HERE WE GO. The campaigning is over, the votes have been cast, and soon it will be time for the counting to begin.
Tomorrow morning, ballot boxes will be opened in centres up and down the country as ballots are sorted and the count for the local elections gets underway. On Sunday morning, the counting will begin for the European elections.
Oh, and don’t forget the votes for a directly elected mayor in Limerick! That’s due to start on Monday.
In the European elections, 73 candidates were on the ballot to contest 14 seats across three constituencies. In the local elections, a whopping 949 seats are up for grabs across the 166 electoral areas that make up the 31 Local Government Authorities in Ireland.
So, as you can see, there is a lot of counting to be done. But how does it all work? Where are the count centres? And when will we have the first (and last) results?
Read on to find out how the next days (possibly weeks!) will play out.
Before we get into the counting, a quick note on Ireland’s much loved, frequently discussed, jealously guarded, at times head-scratchingly arcane, PR-STV voting system.
You’ve already voted, so we won’t get into the weeds on this, but if you want to know whether you should or should not have voted all the way down the ballot sheet, read this very handy explainer:
And for a more specific outline of how PR-STV works, you can read this explainer from all the way back in 2013. First things first, the European and local election ballots are separated, then brought to the respective count centres where they will be counted.
Then, all the ballot papers are mixed and then sorted according to first preferences. Spoiled votes are removed. And then, based on the number of valid votes, the quota (the minimum number of valid votes each candidate must get to be elected) is calculated.
If a candidate receives more than the quota on any count, they are elected, and the surplus votes are transferred to the remaining candidates in proportion to the next available preferences indicated by voters.
If no one gets elected on a count, the person with the lowest number of votes at that time is eliminated, and their votes redistributed.
Counting continues until all the seats are filled, either by candidates reaching the quota, or by the remaining number of candidates matching the remaining seats available. Simple, right?
Constituencies and count centres
So, with that out of the way, let’s start with the European elections. As we’ve said already, Ireland will send 14 MEPs to Europe from its three big constituencies. The constituency breakdown is as follows:
Polls closed at 10pm. As you can imagine, given the large geographic spread and the amount of voters in each constituency, there is a significant amount of work involved in getting the ballots in order to even begin counting.
Tomorrow, the votes will be sorted and separated from the local ballots and will be transported from polling stations around the country to eventually end up in the three primary count centres:
Each constituency has a Returning Officer whose job it is to oversee the election.
When will we have the first results?
Counting will begin Sunday morning at 9am. However, counting on the European elections can be a long and arduous process, with days often passing before the final results are in.
The results of the elections cannot be officially announced until all voting in all EU countries is completed, in order to prevent the outcome in one country influencing voters in another. Some countries won’t vote until Sunday, with final polls closing in all countries by 10pm.
So, while the first count may be completed Sunday afternoon or evening at some stage, the first results will not be announced until after 10pm. That’s only for the first count, and it’s likely that no one will be elected at this point (or that all the votes will be even counted by then).
Back in 2019, Fine Gael’s Marian Harkin was the first MEP elected in the Midlands North West constituency on the Monday afternoon following the vote. Think days, not hours.
The count in Dublin wound up on the Tuesday evening, with Clare Daly and Fianna Fáil’s Barry Andrews taking the final seats. Midlands North West didn’t finish up until late on the Wednesday evening.
Ireland South was another matter entirely. Just 300 votes separated Sinn Féin’s Liadh Ní Riada from Green Party’s Grace O’Sullivan. This prompted Sinn Féin to call for a full recount, which was ordered and could have taken weeks.
Ní Riada eventually bowed out, however, the final two MEPs were elected the following Wednesday 5 June. The election itself took place on Friday, 24 May.
Again, it will take days or longer before everything is decided.
With all that said, according to Euronews, services of the European Parliament will publish their first estimations at 18:15 CET (5.15pm Irish time) on Sunday, and the first projection of all seats at 20:15 CET (7.15pm Irish time).
The projections will be based on estimated votes and pre-election opinion polls. This means that by Sunday evening we’ll have a shape of what’s the come, and you may see people conceding or admitting it wasn’t their day around this time. But nothing is guaranteed at this stage.
The exit polls back in 2019 overestimated the ‘Green Wave’ that was due to sweep the nation. While the Greens did have a good day out, it wasn’t at the level predicted, so caution is always advised.
All in all, barring any recounts or big controversies, it will likely be mid-week or later before all the seats are filled.
The count centres
The local elections are both simpler and more complex. Simpler because we don’t have to wait for the rest of Europe before the counting can begin. The first boxes will be opened at 9am on Saturday. More complex because there are A LOT more councillors to elect. Each local authority will have its own count centre.
Across the four Dublin local authorities, for example, the count centres will be:
In Cork City, the counts will take place in City Hall.
In County Cork, counts will take place in:
The Count
First, the votes will have to be sorted and separated, and counting will likely begin in earnest in the afternoon, though it could be later in some areas.
As counters separate out the votes for the European, local, and (in Limerick) directly elected mayor elections, they will have to make sure that the total votes for each matches the total number of ballots cast (as per the polling station official’s count).
After that, the counting can begin and you can expect to start seeing some seats filled and announced fairly quickly, though it will still take a few days before the final seats are filled. Counting and coverage will likely continue long into the night.
TheJournal‘s liveblog from 2019 didn’t wind up until after 3am.
By that time, about 200 seats had been filled.
While the majority of seats will be filled by Monday, last around it took six days before the full composition of each local authority was known.
Counting for the Limerick mayoral election won’t kick off until Monday, following the local election count.
So, one again, settle in and enjoy it. It’s a marathon and not a sprint.
TheJournal will bring you dedicated coverage across the weekend with reporters at all the major count centres, live candidate tracking and updates over the next few days.
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I wonder who’ll be liable to pay the penalties if they don’t keep budgets balanced. I’m guessing it won’t be deducted from their own salaries anyway!
Certainly recommend this. It be a step in the right direction.
I agree MC. However if councils are required by statute to balance their books, why not national governments?
Cannot understand why they don’t balance their budgets as it is . Surely they have to account for every cent spent ? The figures they produce I assume are given to the government to be part of their budgeted figures . So if the government accept non budgeted figures how can they get the total economy’s figures correct ?
The mind boggles !
The degree of intrusion into how we run our country is staggering. Humiliating. And 21% of you would vote the party that invited this on us back into power.
Didn’t FG and indeed SF also ‘invite’ them in by voting in favor of the bank guarantee? They’re all as bad as each other in reality, and once they get into power all doubt about that is removed.
Ah Vincent stop,isn’t Enda fawning with happiness everytime he announces with exceeded Troika targets.FG are continuing FF’s policies no difference,just two very regressive budgets(the poorest pays most each time)
@mart- why did a bank guarantee arise, again?
@norman- the more targets hit, the greater the prospect of a return to the market, the faster we bid the Troika farewell….
Vincent even as you say if we return to the markets,we will only bid farewell to 1/3 of the Troika.The Fiscal Treaty FG coerced the country into accepting has made the other 2/3 ‘s a permanant feature here.
The Councils also need to provide justification and value for money on spending. They budget published by Kildare CC shows a spend of some €750,000 for parks cleaning and refuse collection….The largest park to me is around 10-20 acres, has about 5 bins which are always overflowing and never seem to be collected. If this is characteristic of all towns in the county how in the name can they be spending the money?
Great idea on paper, but its going to cost more to merge than the savings will generate.
Another FG/Labour spend a million to save 50,000
Funny how in the last few days with some degree of entry back to the market, possible sale of government interest in aib , a good Christmas for the domestic economy the troika decide to speak out . Confidence seemed to be lifting slightly. The eu presidency and kenny in my opinion seeming to perform well in Europe we get kicked back into our box. The economist prints an editorial recommeding help for ireland. we meet the vast majority of targets set for us. We dont do a greece and have debt write off and second bailout.Then Just in case you think of asking for a deal on bank debt remember you are still bad boys and girls…time will pass and eventually we will get out of this but we need to never forget this …remember we held a grudge and contempt for the Brits for 800 years time to swap the contempt
Looks like a deal on bank debt is off the cards.
@ciaran- and you extrapolated that from….?
The European Commission in principal recommending our councils to balance their books is not unreasonable ,we do owe the troika a lot of money.but if a european policy of fines is created as a result of the councils inability to reform their services then we should be very worried and at all costs easiest this.this would be the equivalent of a money lender calling to your door and saying he wants two grand next week because HE didn’t come get his 500 last week,does that make sense,Europe must understand that the Irish as citizens cannot be expected to pay huge daily fines because of the incompetence of our leaders,in Ireland we have no control of services like councils or hospitals or transport because our leaders ,or management have their positions cemented in place with a system of no responsibility which has been created under the watchful eye of Europe.the European Commission has failed the Irish people in allowing our very intelligent population be gradually disenfranchised by a long established fraternity of characters that would make George Orwells pigs look good.( maybe that’s harsh ,but those pigs were organized!!) So Europe ,if the services that we pay for don’t deliver in terms of value for money ,then the councils will be fined alright,but they’ll be fined by us the people or not at all.
Resist it not easiest it ,damn you technology!
Yes master ! Lets tip our hats to the European gentry.
Altho i dont like the way the troika are poking their nose in almost everything in every article on journal today
I do agree with them on this we should be running balanced budgets at council level its just a shame it takes a boom and bust and a a bailout for the country to be spoon fed basics like this why could t this be all done 2000-2008
I wonder if they are telling the Commission that they are increasing the number of Councillors in Dublin by 50…..
have your say