It was over, bar the shouting, from early morning at the Neptune Town Centre in Cork on Saturday. The early trend was going only one way. Mr Simon Coveney, son of the late Hugh, was going to take the seat left by his father's death last March.
The Sinead Behan radio fiasco earlier in the week, which exposed the Fianna Fail candidate's lack of knowledge about issues such as unemployment in the city she hoped to represent, was blamed by the party faithful for her demise. But there was more to it than that. The radio tape, a quickfire 60 second quiz, was designed to put all the candidates through their paces. It was broadcast during the week on The Pat Kenny Show on local RTE radio. RTE said it was broadcast by mistake.
From Vienna the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, blamed RTE for his party's defeat in the by-election. He said the discrepancy between polls (including four of the party's own) which predicted a close result, and the outcome could only be explained by the broadcasting by RTE of the infamous "quiz" tape.
"Obviously the RTE tape had a big influence and it certainly affected our performance. There is no doubt about that," the Taoiseach said. "The fact is that we went down seven points in just four days."
He added that "things move on" and as far as he was concerned the issue was now closed.
But as the count went on last Saturday, other factors became obvious. The radio incident may have cost Ms Behan some votes, but certainly it did not cost her the election. To say that would be to deny the efficacy of the Coveney campaign, the quality of the candidate and the fact that, like his father, his appeal crossed party lines.
If you looked for the signs, you could see that he would benefit massively from transfers. And that is exactly what he did. It was clear on the doorsteps, too. The polls said it would be close - and with good reason - because Ms Behan, also young, energetic and articulate, was a very good candidate.
In the end he got the vote out and she did not. And to the amazement of Fianna Fail, he managed to do it in places where they thought he would not. The early ballot boxes, watched by the tallymen, told a graphic tale. In the Togher-Glasheen area, where the Fianna Fail TD, Mr John Dennehy, was the master of ceremonies for the Behan campaign, she came in third behind Coveney and O'Sullivan.
Fianna Fail's own early tally also showed that in Ballincollig, where another sitting TD, Mr Batt O'Keeffe, was leading the charge on her behalf, she came second to Coveney. After 176 boxes had been completed, the Labour tallymen were saying that Behan stood at 29.21 per cent; Coveney at 37.69 per cent; and their own candidate at 19.14 per cent. The Progressive Democrats crashed. Polling fewer than 1,000 votes, they were behind even Sinn Fein, whose candidate, Mr Henry Cremin, hardly managed to raise a murmur during the campaign. Trying desperately to pick up the pieces, the party leader, Ms Mary Harney, said it was time to go back to the drawing board.
The returning officer didn't hang about. He eliminated five candidates after the first count, leaving Behan, Boyle, Coveney and O'Sullivan. The third count, on which Mr Coveney was elected, told the whole story of the transfers. Behan got 3,007; Coveney 6,510. He had exceeded the quota and was duly elected. Mr John Bruton arrived at the count centre to pronounce that a new day had dawned for Fine Gael.