How to watch the election count: The key races to follow this weekend

With all votes now cast, and ballot boxes spilling open across the country from 9am, here’s what to watch for in the days ahead.
The only early data we have on how the vote went is The Irish Times/RTÉ/TG4 exit poll and there’s more in Saturday’s paper and online.
The first hard count data will come from tallies run in the count centres by the political parties – often an operation that is pooled in the larger count centres. This is a visual tally of the first preference votes as they are sorted by staff, and can be very accurate.
However, these efforts can fall flat, or simply disintegrate as parties lose interest either because their candidate is likely to win out, or not feature. This data is not routinely published, but it finds its way to journalists and will end up being published online or on social media.
Kevin Humphreys, the former Labour TD, famously has a clutch of three boxes mixing gentrifying areas, areas popular with renters and affluent areas, giving him near-mythical forecasting power in his south Dublin area. He warns against extrapolating too much from these boxes in a general election.
The first counts of three-seat constituencies with shorter ballot papers will come in, and it’s from here that people will start to be elected.
Things could tie up fast in the likes of Limerick County, where sitting TDs Patrick O’Donovan (Fine Gael), Niall Collins (Fianna Fáil) and Richard O’Donoghue (Independent Ireland) are expected to be re-elected.
But they won’t all be straightforward – in Meath West, for example, there is only one strongly favoured seat, that of Peadar Tóibín of Aontú – Johnny Guirke (Sinn Féin) is favoured, but watch out for a battle royale between Aisling Dempsey (FF) and Linda Nelson Murray (FG). Independent Noel French and Ronan Moore of the Social Democrats may come into the reckoning.
Cork South West will be fascinating, where party leaders Holly Cairns (Soc Dems) and Michael Collins (Ind) are bidding to hold seats alongside Christopher O’Sullivan (FF), with Fine Gael gunning for a seat here.
The new Wicklow-Wexford constituency, with just 10 candidates on the ballot, may be a very quick count.
Poll toppers with healthy surpluses can have a big impact on the race to fill seats behind them, but legendary surplus hogs such as Michael Ring have gone (Fine Gael is now running four candidates in Mayo), while even Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea in Limerick City has a running mate.
The Sinn Féin wave in 2020, with few second candidates in place to catch it, elected a lot of left-of-centre TDs, but that won’t be repeated, so that’s perhaps less of a factor.
Nonetheless, keep an eye out for places where a surplus might come into contention; Wicklow, for example, where the direction of Simon Harris’s surplus will come into the reckoning as the day goes on.
It’s not one election, but 43 small elections. So, watch for local factors and internal battles among and within parties.
Fianna Fáil want to add to Cathal Crowe’s seat in Clare, where there is no love lost with party stablemate Timmy Dooley.
In Wexford, there is acrimony between Fine Gael’s two geographically bunched candidates vying to keep Paul Kehoe’s seat.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are facing off in tight races everywhere; keep an eye on Dublin South Central and Dublin North West for who comes out on top, or if both are squeezed out.
Gene pool Independents will be a headache for parties; Sinn Féin are up against it to keep seats in Laois and Kildare North, where the party’s former TDs Brian Stanley and Patricia Ryan are on the ballot, while former Fine Gaeler Gillian Toole, now an Independent, is battling for a seat against Fine Gael’s Sharon Tolan and others in Meath East.
Most party leaders should be safe – but not all. As mentioned, Cairns is not a safe seat in Cork South West. As the day wears on into the night and the early hours of Sunday, watch Roderic O’Gorman’s fortunes in the five-seat Dublin West. The Green Party leader will probably hold on – but if he, or his colleague Ossian Smyth in Dún Laoghaire, are in a battle, it presages a really tough day for the Greens.
The “Harris Hop” was supposed to cancel out Fine Gael’s swathe of retirements at this election, and they should hold in places, such as Leo Varadkar’s old seat in Dublin West.
But watch Louth, where the party’s troubles with John McGahon are well publicised. Keep an eye on Cork North West, where Harris’s disastrous campaign trail encounter with care worker Charlotte in a Kanturk supermarket went down. It is likely to be a ding-dong between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for two of three seats. Watch Kerry too: this is where all Fine Gael’s chips in the constituency are on Billy O’Shea.
Another one to watch is Sinn Féin’s 2020 poll toppers who have not built a national profile. Expect the vote to be down for Johnny Mythen (Wexford), Réada Cronin (Kildare North) and Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North), but will they be in a scrap, or will the late Sinn Féin rally secure their seats? Ditto for constituencies where Sinn Féin holds two seats: Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan, Louth and Dublin Mid West.
As time wears on, the broad shape of the next Dáil will become clear. But with the electorate predicted to give an ambiguous answer about exactly what sort of government it wants, final seats will be massively important to clear – or obstruct – a path to government.
The number of Independents will also be one to watch: see if they can break up party dominance in places such as Wicklow, or even return two in the likes of Wexford.
Smaller parties will also be key. The Greens will have to hold their marginal seats in the likes of Dublin South Central, while Labour are targeting seats including Dublin South West, Fingal West and Cork South Central. The Soc Dems, similarly, have designs on Dublin Rathdown and Cork East, while Aontú want to win seats in the likes of Wexford and Cavan-Monaghan.