All politics is local.
This morning in the Nagle Rice sports complex in Portlaoise – a facility that is shared by Portlaoise CBS and Scoil Chríost Rí secondary schools – counting of the Laois votes in the Presidential Election will get underway.
Three candidates were on the ballot sheet – Independent Catherine Connolly from Galway, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys from Monaghan and Fianna Fáil’s Jim Gavin from Dublin. Gavin withdrew from the race almost three weeks ago but his name remained on the ballot paper.
Whoever is elected will become the 10th president of Ireland and replace Michael D Higgins, who has served two terms in the Aras since 2011.
According to a series of polls across the past couple of weeks, Catherine Connolly is predicted to be elected, quite possibly on the first count.
Over 3.6 million people across the country were entitled to vote in this election, almost 65,000 in the constituency of Laois.
How many actually did vote will be one of the main points of interest. Turnout in 2018 was at a record low of 43.9% – will it be even lower this time?
Other points of interest will be how many votes Jim Gavin will actually receive and if the Spoil the Vote campaign will have a major impact. Spoiled votes are generally under 1%.
Though a large crowd isn’t expected in Portlaoise for the count, it will largely follow the same process as the Local and General Election counts last year.
It’s believed that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are teaming up to do a partial tally and we will aim to get our hands on some of those figures.
Though the tallies aren’t 100% accurate, they are a strong guide to how a particular area voted.
It’s unlikely that all boxes will be tallied, but we do hope to be able to give our audience an idea of how Emo, Arles, Pike of Rushall or Clonaslee voted for example.
In total, the Laois electorate is 64,816 and there are a total of 47 polling stations across the county.
Within those stations, however, there are a total of 115 boxes. For example, there are 17 different boxes in Holy Family in Portlaoise, 11 in Knockmay, five in Graiguecullen, three in Stradbally, two in Emo. Many smaller areas like Shanahoe, Rath, Vicarstown, Ballacolla have only one.
The Laois votes will be separated and counted and when a 1st count result is confirmed, that will be sent to the Central Count Centre in Dublin Castle.
Nationally, the 1st count will only be confirmed when all 43 constituency counts have been finalised.
If a candidate hasn’t reached the quota, a 2nd count will commence in the constituencies across the country. With three names on the ballot paper, a maximum of two counts is all that will be required. If a candidate exceeds 50% of the vote on the 1st count, they will be duly elected without the need for a 2nd count.
We will be in the count centre from 9am and will attempt to bring you updates throughout the morning.
