Kildare North

Profile

Province: Rest of Leinster

Seats: 5

Current TDs: 2 FF, 1 FG, 1 SF, 1 SD

Projection: 1 FF, 2 FG, 1 SF, 1 SD

Analysis

December 2025

An almightly strategic blunder by Fine Gael very likely cost them a second seat here in 2024 – what they thought they were doing running three candidates is beyond me – rectifying that in future would give them a marginal egde to swipe the final seat here off of Fianna Fáil on current numbers. It is not a gift, and I would expect something close, but they should be favoured assuming they don’t do anything silly again.

Beyond that, there are a few candidates in touching distance but not seriously close at this point. Labour could run well here, depending on how much pressure the surging Soc Dems put on their vote base, and ex-SD Cllr. Bill Clear, motivated by burning animus at not being selected, did well here in 2024. Clear has since joined Independent Ireland in one of the most incomprehensible political journeys in recent memory, which probably doesn’t do him a lot of favours overall. While he has shown he can get a good vote base in Naas, he already did rather well out of right-wing transfers so I’m not sure how much juice the II branding gets him, if it doesn’t end up hurting him given he cultivated his support base from the left.

August 2023 (redraw)

Kildare North gains a handful of EDs around Naas from Kildare South, with a relatively small population. The constituency also gains a seat, which I expect will be fiercely contested based on current polling numbers.

If you saw my preliminary projections, I had the Social Democratss in a second seat here. After revisiting the numbers I found the error that led to this – but I don’t think it’s implausible; Catherine Murphy will cruise past a quota, they have several councillors and are transfer friendly. Of course there are arguments against as well – how much of this is down to Murphy’s personal support, and how a party with almost zero experience of managing a vote split ^{(as far as I’m aware their only experience of this was the North Inner City LEA debacle in 2019)} pulls it off, especially where the margins will be very fine.

However, the fact is Fianna Fáil should be favoured to take this seat, but there are some things to consider. Firstly, there’s no guarantee Frank O’Rourke – who came fifth in 2020 – runs again; a less established candidate may prove weaker. Both the Soc Dems (as above) and Sinn Féin (perhaps more realistically) could contend with a second candidate – and the balance would ultimately come down to transfers, which as I have said many times, are very hard to project.

January 2021

Not a whole lot to note here – the SDs, SF and FG are currently locks to keep their seats. The one potentially interesting piece is if FF’s polling continues to decline and they run two candidates again; at that point a second FG candidate would enter into play. However if FF keep their heads and only run one, it would take a major polling shift to indicate any change in this constituency.