Ballina has the chance to return a second TD
Fine Gael Cllr Mark Duffy, fourth from right, on the campaign trail Bonniconlon with, from left: Michael Noone, John McCormack, Margaret Devine, John Fox, Cllr John O'Hara, John Duffy, Joshua Duffy and Sam Duffy. Picture: John O'Grady.
In the 27 years since Mayo became a five-seat constituency, Ballina has only elected two TDs on one occasion. That was in 2011 when a fairly unique set of circumstances propelled Dara Calleary (Fianna Fáil) and Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) into Dáil Éireann. Mulherin was one of four Fine Gael TDs elected in Mayo that year as Taoiseach-in-waiting Enda Kenny received an unprecedented mandate from his native county. Calleary, who had been first elected in 2007, was Fianna Fáil’s only realistic prospect and garnered votes from across the county as the local organisation looked to salvage something from the nationwide collapse in the party vote.
When Mayo became a four-seater in 2016, Mulherin lost her seat despite a very creditable performance that saw her take 7,841 first preferences (12.5% of the total poll). Four years later, her vote plummeted to 5,435 (8.5% of the total poll) yet there was still only 221 votes separating her from Alan Dillon when she was eliminated on the sixth count (although there was no guarantee she would have won the seat as geography favoured Lisa Chambers who had a sizeable lead on Mulherin).
In the recent constituency opinion poll commissioned by TG4, Fine Gael’s new candidate in Ballina, former Independent councillor Mark Duffy, was at 10%, which puts him slightly ahead of Mulherin’s showing in 2020 but well behind her display four years earlier. Realistically, Duffy will need to be taking 8,000 first preferences to be in the hunt for a seat because he will struggle for transfers due to the dearth of candidates in the North Mayo area.
Unlike Castlebar, which leaked votes to ‘outside’ candidates in 2020, Ballina has tended to vote local since 2002 when the town found itself without a TD after the outgoing Minister of State Tom Moffatt lost his seat to Independent Dr Jerry Cowley. The Mulranny GP was, of course, a native of Ballina, so that accounted for the unusual result, which has not been replicated since, although Rose Conway-Walsh took a fine vote (2,619 votes) from the Ballina area in 2020. However, Dara Calleary (5,212) and Michelle Mulherin (3,176) accounted for about two-thirds of the Ballina vote, though Mulherin’s total was well down from 2016 and her vote was halved in some boxes.
Mark Duffy’s first challenge is to win back some of those lost votes – be it from Dara Calleary or Rose Conway-Walsh. In 2011, Mulherin took 5,807 first preferences from the Ballina area compared to Calleary’s 4,023, so there is the possibility of a swing to Fine Gael, but Fianna Fáil is in a far stronger position in 2024 than it was in those dark days of 2011 when the party – like the Irish economy – was in meltdown.
If Mark Duffy is to compete for a seat, he will need to take more than 4,000 votes from the Ballina area, and that still won’t guarantee him victory but it will make him competitive (provided the Fine Gael vote holds up for him in Swinford). Will he be able to take back some of the votes lost to Sinn Féin in the dying days of the 2020 campaign? The TG4 poll suggests that Rose Conway-Walsh has lost some support but Sinn Féin has performed well in the most recent national polls and the suspicion is that the party vote in Ballina will be more resilient than in Castlebar, for example.
Duffy’s best path to victory is to build up a significant early lead over his two running mates, Keira Keogh and Martina Jennings, and hope that their transfers see him over the line. In 2011, Calleary and Mulherin shared over 70% of the Ballina electoral area vote and a similar percentage will be required with Duffy needing a 50-50 share (or something close to it) if he is to get the head start he needs over the rest of the field.
There are two seats for Fine Gael in Mayo but geography does not favour Mark Duffy’s bid to join the expected poll-topper Alan Dillon in Dáil Éireann. He will need an exceptional vote in Balllina to set him on his way, and even then he won’t be guaranteed an easy passage because transfers will be unlikely to flow from South Mayo to a Ballina-based candidate. Duffy has a real chance of taking a seat – there is no doubt about that – but it will take a magnificent display to pull it off, and it will also require Fine Gael to arrest the decline in its support that has occurred since the campaign began.
