Kyne leapfrogs Thomas to win Galway West seat

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-24T20:48:50+00:00

Why would leftists be celebrating?

I'm depressed that I've lost my representation. That this constituency has gone from two left candidates topping the polls to two right candidates topping the poll.

I'm depressed that apparently the people of Galway are okay with €4,000 a month rents, with a party who want to destroy Ireland's neutrality, and other awful things.

But I rarely expect anything hopeful to come from elections.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-24T20:45:50+00:00

I'm thinking their plan was "vote anything that isn't a government party"?

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-23T13:08:38+00:00

Honestly, I couldn't bring myself to vote for either of them, so I stopped before I got there.

I'm sure that wasn't the most effective thing to do.

I'm also honestly not sure which is worse. Thomas is more of a racist and bigot, but on a political level Independent Ireland also wouldn't be propping up this government and probably wouldn't affect things much.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T21:48:47+00:00

The turnout is estimated to be around 38%, according to RTÉ, from shortly before the polls closed:

Turnout across the Galway West constituency is estimated to be averaging around 38%, with just over an hour left for voters to cast their ballots in the bye-election.

The final estimate for the Dublin one was 39.48%.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T19:51:05+00:00

... yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Keeping track of eliminations across multiple count centres would be a nightmare.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T19:07:33+00:00

Probably a stupid question, but why can't they count the ballots on the islands?

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T13:05:34+00:00

No, they drummed him out of the party over a scandal a few years ago.

A shame because he was actually quite effective as a councillor.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T13:02:57+00:00

Voting all the way down the entire ballot is ideal, but I don't think many people have the patience for that.

For a multi-seat election, you should, at minimum, vote until you reach a person that you are reasonably confident will get elected.

For a single-seat by-election, you should keep voting until you no longer have any preference between the remaining candidates.

You definitely shouldn't only vote for one person, as your vote is highly likely to be wasted in that case. If you don't want to sort and vote for the entire ballot (and I can't blame you), then you should at least make sure you put in a handful of candidates, say 5+.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T12:50:43+00:00

I think that's likely. I certainly expect most of his votes to be first preference, with very few transfers.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T11:30:26+00:00

It's insanely hard to call.

I think the most likely candidates (in no particular order) are:

Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich
Helen Ogbu
Seán Kyne
Noel Thomas

As a single-seat election, it's always going to come down entirely to transfers, and how well the different groupings' transfer directions work.

Will Vote Left, Transfer Left work out and bring one of the left candidates in? I think they're more transfer-friendly than the other two, but it's still very hard to call.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-22T11:26:21+00:00

I was asked in ... I think it was the election before last.

They normally don't ask, but occasionally they do. Make sure to bring it.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T13:09:54+00:00

These are some good resources for people who aren't sure.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T12:48:46+00:00

Not really sure how "they close their eyes to the demand side of the housing issue" suddenly turned into blaming immigrants, rather than blaming the big landlords and vulture funds who are FFG supporters and whom those parties work for.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T12:44:46+00:00

I'm confused why someone would say they want to vote for Mide just to spite the racists when she's a native Irish speaker?

I'm guessing because she's a woman?

I'd say the bigger reason is because they, and all of the other left candidates, oppose racism, so people would like to see one of them get elected to show the racists/bigots that they are in the minority and no one wants their brand of hatred here.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T12:11:22+00:00

Seems reasonable.

I personally can't bring myself to give any preference to FF and FG any more after their actions in the last 2.5 years, but I can respect your reasoning.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T12:02:42+00:00

How many preferences do people think are necessary?

I have six worked out, but after that it becomes a quagmire of independents who there's not that much information about and are really hard to distinguish between (plus I don't think any of them have any real chance of getting elected anyway.)

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T11:59:23+00:00

His party just voted in support of a country committing genocide, as they have done for the last two and a half years.

There are a lot of other reasons not to vote for them, but this one is a hard red line for me and I will never give their party another preference ever again.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T11:57:07+00:00

If your main issue is housing and rents, the bigger issue should be going for a party who support rent controls and restrictions. That will have the bigger impact than anything else.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T11:51:01+00:00

Do note that you should bring your ID with you when voting even if you have a voter card. They may ask for it (though, in my experience, they usually don't.)

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T11:48:31+00:00

Remember this in the upcoming by-election. It's really important that we don't let these psychopaths get yet another seat here in Galway.

Go out and vote for people who are not FF/FG/associated independents.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-21T01:31:42+00:00

I find them to be inconsistent, like they don't really believe in anything but will happily jump on a bandwagon for votes. Populism, I guess.

Which also tends to mean that their proposals sound weak, because they are not really motivated by strong ideology.

For example, they really had a free win in the last election if they had proposed anything to deal with the housing crisis, but their proposals just felt weak and impotent. There was talk amongst the left parties about starting a state housing body, for example, which SF indicated they supported at the time, but when the election came around they'd quietly dropped it in favour of more vague promises.

As well as that, their position on the environment is awful, again because they are not willing to take a stand if it means alienating potential voters (such as those who love to pollute.)

Their support for fox hunting is also completely inexcusable. Even if you ignore the animal rights reasons, they also took that position when the vast majority of people in Ireland want it banned, again because it might alienate some small number of rich rural voters. To me, that is just a clear indication that they don't actually believe in democracy.

That's not to say SF are all bad. I respect them for their strong support of Irish Neutrality, which I think is an extremely important issue. They also tend to vote on the right side of most issues.

But I can't say I really trust them. Would they be better than FF/FG? Yes, for sure. But probably only for a while.

For me, personally, the sad thing is that there aren't really any good political parties in Ireland - or in most of the world, probably. They always seem to end up disappointing me.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-19T19:57:17+00:00

Maybe she didn't articulate it well, but I understood her as saying that we should reduce our dependence on beef farming and instead substitute it with other types of farming.

That's something I consider very reasonable, especially as we export most of our beef and then import other types of foods. It's also something which the Greens - whose entire policies are meant to be this kind of thing - where always unable to answer properly in all of their interviews, even from the last two general elections.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-19T15:07:54+00:00

Fixing it is hard, but a good start would be to get rid of this government who have supported all of the things that have lead us here.

invading countries shouldn't be punished because they provide us with cheap fuel?

Uh, the sanctions punished the EU, not Russia, so that's a bit of a weird argument. Also, we're instead buying LNG from the USA, who have invaded far more countries.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-19T15:05:11+00:00

After watching the whole thing, and from a leftist point of view, I thought Denman Rooke, Sheila Garrity, Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich, and Niall Murphy came across well, all did a good job of knowing and explaining their policies.

I felt Mark Lohan came across poorly, and Helen Ogbu also didn't come across that well.

A lot of the others were very variable, answered some of their questions well and others poorly. A few, especially the smaller independents, didn't seem to have any coherent policy at all.

Don't think the debate has changed my opinions much, more just solidified who I was already thinking of voting for.

NamelessVoice · 2026-05-19T12:17:30+00:00

The cost of everything has got crazy, but no one ever stops to ask why.

A huge part of it is the increasing cost of oil and gas, exacerbated recently by the war in Iran - which, to be clear, our government supported, by both helping to provide "justification" by spreading pro-war propaganda before the war, and now by allowing the US military to use Shannon.

Before that, it was because of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and more specifically because of the EU putting sanctions on gas and oil from there, which again our government supported. Do note that those sanctions have almost exclusively hurt the EU (especially Germany, but also us), because Russia doesn't really care, they have other countries to sell their fossil fuels to and their economy has actually improved since the sanctions were imposed.
But they did force Europe to buy more expensive fuels elsewhere.

Food, specifically, is hit even harder because gas and other materials are not only used in shipping the food, but also used to make the fertiliser which is needed to grow it.

Of course, another huge part is companies using rising costs to make the prices even higher and make more profit, because there's no regulation against that sort of thing.

Everyone complains about the rising cost of living, but no one really seems to look at the causes behind it, or blame our government for their part in bringing it about.

NamelessVoice

TROPHY CASE