Offaly

Profile

Province: Rest of Leinster

Seats: 3

Current TDs: 1 FF ^(vacant), 1 IND ^{(incumbents in former Laois-Offaly constituency)}

Projection: 1 FF, 1 FG, 1 IND

Analysis

October 2024

Unlike the chaos in it’s former partner, Laois, the change in likely outcome in Offaly has a very simple explanation. Sinn Féin are going down in the polls, Fine Gael are improving, and we have hit a tipping point in the balance between the two. FG had a very rough go of it in 2020 here, with their Offaly candidate finishing behind the Laois-based one from SF in the Offaly EDs. Considering the weak starting position, that’s why so it’s taken over a year of polling change since the boundary redraw for this to reflect in the projections.

The other thing that has added some interest here since we last took a look is that I’ve done more work on what might happen with the votes of former candidates John Leahy and Ken Smollen (who combined for a very significant portion of the Offaly vote – around 15%). Incumbent TD Carol Nolan (IND) is an obvious likely candidate to benefit from their absence, and Leahy’s transfers have historically been pretty FG-friendly, but there’s also cross-pollination with other Independents. Independent Ireland Cllr Fergus McDonnell and Cllr Eddie Fitzpatrick (who quit Fianna Fáil after not getting selected) could benefit from this. I wouldn’t favour either on these numbers but they have potential to be competitive.

Also, Fianna Fáil will be pushing hard for two. It’s difficult to manage this in a two-seater, but this is historically a tremendously strong area for them, so it’s worth keeping an eye on if their polling does continue to improve.

August 2023 (redraw)

Similar to Laois, Offaly splits off from Laois-Offaly and forms its own constituency again. Portarlington North ED returns to the area, but brings with it an insignificant amount of voters in the grand scheme of things.

Two of the Laois-Offaly incumbents hold seats here – Barry Cowen (FF) and Carol Nolan (IND). The model had also projected previously that the second Sinn Féin seat in Laois-Offaly would be Offaly based; that follows here as well, giving a change from current incumbents but not from the prior projection.

There’s almost no intrigue in this constituency on current numbers. The three above should comfortably walk into seats, and Fine Gael don’t look like much of a threat – in 2020, both their candidates combined (one of whom is an Offaly-based ex-TD) got less votes in Offaly than SF, whose candidate was based in Portlaoise. An actual Offaly-based SF candidate should have an easy time of it, though they do have no councillors.