FOR THOSE who gather this afternoon at a north Dublin hotel to choose Fine Gael's candidate for the presidential election, electability is a key consideration, writes NOEL WHELAN
Up to the time of writing, no reliable polls have been published on how Pat Cox, Mairead McGuinness or Gay Mitchell might do in a presidential contest. The selectors therefore can rely only on an examination of the previous electoral performances of these candidates and take a guess on how they might go in a presidential contest.
All three candidates are or have been MEPs and all have impressive electoral records.
Of the three, Gay Mitchell has being doing elections for the longest and has fought 11 successfully since 1981. Eight of these were as a Dáil candidate in Dublin South Central, which he represented from 1981 to 2007. On his first outing, he got 14 per cent of the vote there and this had grown to 22 per cent by 1997. In 2002, Fine Gael’s vote in Dublin collapsed but Mitchell managed to poll 12.4 per cent and retain his Dáil seat.
In 2004, he switched to the European Parliament, polling an impressive 90,749 votes on his first outing and topping the poll. He was, of course, the only Fine Gael candidate in Dublin for that election and again in the 2009 European election.
In the latter, he polled a slightly improved vote of 96,715. One thing is clear: Gay Mitchell is an extremely popular candidate, at least in Dublin.
Mairead McGuinness is even more popular in those counties of Leinster outside Dublin. When she ran for the European Parliament in 2004, she was a political novice although she enjoyed a high profile as an agri-journalist and TV presenter. She polled a whopping 114,249 votes – getting a vote from one in every four voters in the Ireland East constituency, meaning her appeal extended beyond the traditional Fine Gael electorate.
Her record as a vote-getter in European elections is second only to Brian Crowley’s. McGuinness’s vote in 2004 was all the more impressive when one considers that not only did she have a running mate but that running mate was none other than the incumbent MEP, Avril Doyle. McGuinness clearly brought new votes to the party and they each won a seat. McGuinness could not, however, repeat that Euro constituency-wide performance in a Dáil election. In 2007, she was added to the Fine Gael ticket alongside Fergus O’Dowd in Louth and polled disappointingly, getting less than half a quota.
Her appeal in the Ireland East constituency is still very strong. In the 2009, European election, when Longford and Westmeath were drawn out of the constituency, she got 110,366 votes which represented a slightly increased vote share, and she again took the first seat.
In 1989, Pat Cox, then general secretary of the Progressive Democrats and with a limited profile as a former RTÉ reporter, not only won a European Parliament seat in the Munster constituency but also topped the poll with 85,558 votes. This was no mean achievement against very strong opposition, which included no fewer than two former presidents of the Irish Farmers’ Association: Independent TJ Maher and Paddy Lane who ran for Fianna Fáil. Cox has also enjoyed Dáil electoral success. In the 1992 election, he ran at short notice as Pearse Wyse’s replacement in Cork South Central and retained the seat for the Progressive Democrats comfortably.
Cox fell out with the Progressive Democrats in advance of the 1994 European elections but held his seat as an Independent even though he was standing against the party’s former leader, Dessie O’Malley. Cox’s first-preference vote was dramatically down at 27,930 but he proved particularly attractive to transfers from Fianna Fáil and other Independents. He has displayed a phenomenal capacity to build political organisations and networks not only in Ireland but also in the European Parliament. In 1999, his first-preference vote was back up to 63,954. It has been 12 years since Cox last contested a direct election but the fact that he has since served a term as president of the European Parliament will assist him in this weekend’s contest.
In the circumstances, Fine Gael has done well to contain the internal selection process. An intense contest between what was originally four and is now three candidates, each with such strong personalities, could have got nasty.
Things have been relatively calm and businesslike, at least publicly, so there is unlikely to be any lingering bitterness once the winner is announced. Fine Gael TDs and handlers say there is a large bloc in the electoral college who are genuinely undecided.
It will sound obvious but one thing those gathering this afternoon should bear in mind is that to be elected president, their candidate will have to get 50 per cent of the vote in either first preferences or transfers.
In the last presidential election in 1997, the Fine Gael candidate Mary Banotti on the first count did no more than get the Fine Gael vote. She got 29 per cent of the first preferences and, in the general election held just five months earlier, Fine Gael got 28 per cent.
To win this presidential contest, Fine Gael needs a candidate who can at least do as well as the party did in last February’s election and then some. To do that, the candidate will not only have to be able to appeal to traditional “blue loyalists” but also to those who only started voting Fine Gael recently.
In February’s election, Fine Gael mopped up the former Progressive Democrat votes and also got about half of those voters who deserted Fianna Fáil. Irrespective of whether or not Fianna Fáil runs a candidate, there will be a lot of former Fianna Fáil votes at play in this presidential election. Whether or not Fine Gael chooses a candidate who can appeal to non-traditional Fine Gael voters will matter and matter a lot.