Pollsters highlight Michael D as heading the market for transfers

Amid all the speculation in the past week over whether Gay Byrne might stand for the Presidency, those running the Michael D Higgins campaign found a piece of good news in the middle of that Red C Opinion Poll that had thrown everyone else into a flap.

Unless an extraordinary candidate comes forward – and even Gay Byrne was not proving that strong – it is unlikely anyone is going to be elected to the Aras on the first count. Transfers in later counts will be crucial in deciding who is the next President, and the pollsters predict Michael D. will get transfers from all over the place.

But this race is anything but predictable at this stage. The possible intervention of Micheal Ó Muircheartaigh adds a whole new dimension to the speculation. Ó Muircheartaigh is no ‘shrinking violet’ like Gaybo ..... he is garrulous, outgoing, an extraordinary mixer, and this gregarious potential candidate would scatter the predictions.

In the analysis by the pollsters in the past week – before the mention of Ó Muircheartaigh – Higgins proved a major getter of transfers from many of the other runners in the field. When the pollsters went further into the figures and looked at the later preference of voters. Higgins was the one highlighted as the leading winner of transfers from a raft of other potential candidates.

Hardly any wonder the Higgins campaign organisers were grinning broadly while others like Micheal Martin went through a crisis. The report said “Higgins secures strong second preference votes” and then went through the list of names of other potential runners whose votes would transfer to Higgins if they went out of the race.

Higgins was cleaning-up transfers from potential names like Independents Mary Davis, Sean Gallagher and Dana Rosemary Scallon and if even MEP Brian Crowley (FF) were to run, Higgins would also get transfers from there. For what it’s worth, in the case of the ‘Coalition Partners’ Higgins was shown as getting 33 per cent of Gay Mitchell’s second preferences, and Mitchell getting 27 per cent of Higgins’ second preferences.

However, as I said, there is hardly much point in looking at potential transfers from Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell, for we must assume that, as things stand, Mitchell and Higgins would at least be among the late runners left in the race for the Aras.

Then, when Gay Byrne announced that he wasn’t interested in running, and Red C re-calibrated their figures allocating the potential Gay Byrne vote out among those still possibly in the field, Higgins was the clear leader and the leading transfer getter.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.