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High drama as Farren pips Canning
10.06.09
Vote transfers prove
hard to call
A DAY of high drama saw Martin Farren cause a huge
upset to take a seat in the Inishowen Electoral
Area, squeezing out Fianna Fail’s Paul Canning as
the Fianna Fail representation from Inishowen was
cut to two seats.
It was clear from early on that sitting councillor
Marian McDonald was always in trouble and likely to
lose a seat, however with Paul Canning in seventh
position in a field of fourteen, it looked for a
long time as if he would do enough to hang on and
take a third seat for Fianna Fail.
With votes having initially been sorted in
Letterkenny on Saturday it was expected that the
count process itself would go quickly on Sunday,
however while the process began at 9am there was no
official first count until almost 7pm when Padraig
MacLochlainn was deemed elected having exceeded the
quota.
At that stage the official figures were not far from
those showing up in the tally figures from the
previous day and it looked as if Fine Gael and
Fianna Fail would hang on to take three seats each.
However Martin Farren who was on 881 votes behind
independent candidate Nicholas Crossan on 956 began
to close the gap on those ahead of him as the
transfers began.
Elected on the first count Padraig MacLochlainn’s
surplus made little difference to the overall
picture but Farren did best from the distribution of
Batty Connell’s vote taking 65 compared to Paul
Canning who took just 5 and Nicholas Crossan who
took 29. |
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The Labour Party
candidate also did well in the transfers from
Sheenagh McMahon, but when Keith Roulstone’s votes -
whose surplus helped Bernard McGuinness over the
line - did not transfer as strongly towards Paul
Canning as it was thought they might, Farren was in
with a real fighting chance if the transfer of
Marian McDonald’s votes was favourable.
And indeed that’s how it turned out with the Labour
Party candidate taking 197 of Marian McDonald’s
transfers to put him within striking distance of
Paul Canning but still behind the Fianna Fail
candidate. |
However when Farren took 92 votes from Sean Ruddy’s
transfers compared to just 14 for Canning, the
battle really began to heat up and the two
candidates were separated by just thirty eight
votes.
And that margin was even closer following the
elimination of Nicholas Crossan when only one vote
separated Paul Canning and Martin Farren.
By that stage nobody dared make a call on how things
would pan out as surplus votes from the elected
Charlie McConalogue left the candidates tied on
1,440 each. John Ryan’s votes were thought to go to
Paul Canning for sure but there were gasps of
disbelief as 40 of his surplus went to Farren and
just 14 to Canning,
All the while Rena Donaghey had yet to make it over
the finish line, but by this stage she was just
eight votes away from the quota and always sure to
be elected.
When Martin Farren then received 19 of Mickey
Doherty’s surplus the long day that had run into
early morning of the following day, came to a
dramatic end with Rena Donaghey elected without
reaching the quota and Martin Farren who twice
before had fought for a seat but failed, was finally
elected to Donegal County Council.
(Inishowen Independent) |
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