Fitzmaurice triumph puts the cat among the pigeons

The by-election in Roscommon-South Leitrim at the weekend was a little strange.  For one, the constituency itself is on its last legs and won't be there by the time the next general election takes place either late next year or in early 2016. Secondly, the bookmakers got it horribly wrong; Ivan Connaughton was almost an unbackable favourite but still ended up nearly 3,000 votes behind Michael Fitzmaurice in the seventh and final count.

Thirdly, we have an unusual situation developing in the constituency. It's now more likely than not that two of the three seats in Roscommon-Galway could be independent seats. And what will happen if Luke Ming Flanagan comes back? Curiouser and curiouser.

Sure there's been a long tradition of Roscommon returning quirky results. I can remember Tom Fox, the original of the species when it came to hospital candidates, making the breakthrough a generation ago.

It also showed that Fianna Fáil can't rely on the local election results as a weathervane for the general election. Sure the party performed well but those results often have a lot to do with local factors, incumbency and the personality of the candidate. Sure, Fianna Fáil were no longer electoral pariahs but its optimism about a big comeback was overstated.

The only silver lining for Fianna Fáil at the weekend was the fact that Sinn Féin did not win the other by-election. If Cathal King had won Dublin South West, it would have cemented the notion that Sinn Féin was a party on an inexorable rise and that was in the process of shutting out Fianna Fáil in the South, in the same way that it shut out the SDLP in the South.

In the event, Fianna Fáil did not do too badly in the election. It won some 22 per cent of the vote – in a general election situation that will be enough to win the party a seat, even if it doesn't attract transfers.

Fianna Fáil big problem is that outside its own supporters, it's not feeling too much love from others. After the disaster of 2011, it is attracting more transfers than Sinn Féin but not that much more.

That should be a concern for the party. It's not picking up transfers from floating voters – outside its own supporters and those who might have a residual 'grá' for the party, it is not just getting it.

Fitzmaurice picked up 8,500 transfers in the seven counts compared to less than 5,000 for Connaughton.

I wrote earlier this week that it was like a stage in the Tour de France when there is a lone breakaway rider and we slowly watch him being reeled and then gobbled up by the peleton in the latter stages of the race.

In the early stages of the election, I though the fact Fitzmaurice was from Galway and was a Galway councillor might go against him a little. But not a bit of it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.