Opinion polls, not byelections, provide the best indication of who the voters want to see in government, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent
The weekend brought a great victory for Fine Gael and another for an Independent candidate of the left; a double defeat for Fianna Fáil; an impressive showing by Sinn Féin; and a mixture of disappointment and encouragement for Labour. And yet it all means very little. Byelections produce results that do not fit into any particular pattern and are almost useless as aids to predicting future voter behaviour.
None would know this better that Tom Hayes, director of elections for Fine Gael's successful Meath candidate, Shane McEntee. In 2001 he won 36 per cent of the vote in the Tipperary South byelection, with Fianna Fáil's candidate winning just 26.5 per cent.
However, just 12 months later in the 2002 general election - when it counted - Fianna Fáil was back up to 38.5 per cent, a very similar vote to the 37.3 per cent it won in 1997. Fine Gael for its part was back down to 24.5 per cent, remarkably similar to the 24.1 per cent it won in 1997.
An Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll, taken just four weeks before the vote in Tipperary South, put Fine Gael at 24 per cent nationally. So it was nonsense then for anyone to claim that Tom Hayes's victory had "confounded the polls", just as it is nonsense for anyone to claim now that its impressive win in Meath has done so.
There are a number of features common to most byelections: the winner benefits from a dramatic surge in support as voters change allegiance to an extent not seen in general elections; government parties perform poorly; smaller parties and independents do well; turnout is low.
This is what has happened in both Meath and Kildare North. Fine Gael won Meath, with its share of the vote jumping from 27 per cent in 2002 to 34 per cent now. Catherine Murphy didn't contest Kildare North in 2002, but won 8.8 per cent when she contested the constituency for Democratic Left in 1997. This time she won 23.6 per cent.
The reluctance to support government parties has continued, meaning it will shortly be a quarter century since a government last won a byelection - Fianna Fáil's Noel Treacy in Galway East in 1982. Fianna Fáil's 32 per cent in Meath is down 12 points from its 2002 result and its Kildare North showing of 25 per cent represents a massive 18-point drop. PD candidate Senator Kate Walsh lost four percentage points to 7.9 per cent. In 2002 the party did not contest Meath where this time it won 5.4 per cent.
But this poor Government performance cannot really be said to mean anything at all when it comes to trying to predict the outcome of the next general election. The traditional anti-government mood at byelections was compounded this time by Fianna Fáil's bizarre failure to have candidates in place in either constituency until the last minute, and the far from wholehearted support offered to the candidates by some sections of the local organisation.
In Meath, it was also added to by a strong, well-organised five-month Fine Gael campaign for Shane McEntee. The party can be delighted with its performance here, which gives it a major morale boost as it continues to work towards being seen during the next general election campaign as the core of an alternative government.
In that respect, however, it will have mixed feelings about its achievement in Kildare North in getting ahead of Labour's Cllr Paddy McNamara, who was seen by many as the favourite or joint favourite with Catherine Murphy in advance. This result is deeply disappointing for Labour - a previously unknown Fine Gael candidate has pushed up the Fine Gael vote as an established Labour councillor loses ground. It is the kind of thing Pat Rabbitte could do without as he seeks to convince doubters in his party that a pre-election alliance won't result in Fine Gael cannibalising Labour.
The more likely explanation is that Independent and former Labour member Catherine Murphy cannibalised Labour support, and damaged McNamara more than any other candidate. Despite her presence, Labour's vote didn't collapse - but having been tipped by some to take the seat, fourth place is a very disappointing outcome for Labour.
The encouraging news for Labour is that with its candidate Dominic Hannigan, it may finally have established a credible presence in Meath after years of failure to settle on a candidate capable of challenging for a seat. Much has been made of the strong performance of Sinn Féin's Joe Reilly but Hannigan, running for the first time, won 11.2 per cent - just one percentage point behind the well-known Sinn Féin candidate. More usefully for Labour, his support is concentrated strongly in the eastern part of the constituency, positioning him well to contest the new Meath East constituency which will come into being at the next general election.
Information on the strength of transfers between Fine Gael and Labour - who announced a voting pact on a number of occasions before and during the campaign - is not overly encouraging for them. The presence of former Labour member Catherine Murphy in Kildare North may have kept the transfer rate from Labour's McNamara to Fine Gael's Scully down to a disappointing 40 per cent. But it may suggest, too, that if there is a credible candidate remaining who is broadly from the left, many Labour voters will transfer to them rather than to Fine Gael.
It is difficult to estimate the transfer rate in Meath, as the Labour and Sinn Féin candidates were eliminated together and had their votes distributed at the same time, but the transfer rate there seems to have been close to 70 per cent, a much better outcome for the potential alternative government.
Of course the transfer rate in the opposite direction - from Fine Gael to Labour - was not measured, as in each constituency the Labour candidate was eliminated first. But party activists watching votes being sorted said there was a solid transfer from Fine Gael to Labour.
Minister Noel Dempsey was among those who yesterday sought to explain away the strong Sinn Féin vote by suggesting that with a relatively low voter turnout, Sinn Féin had "got its vote out" and therefore achieved 12.25 per cent of the vote, compared to 9.4 per cent last time. There may be some validity in the proposition that loyal Sinn Féin supporters would have been particularly keen to come out to make their point in the wake of the hostile attention their party has been getting in recent months.
But with 6,087 of those who voted giving Sinn Féin their number one, the party's appeal goes beyond a hard core of republicans. We will never know how well they would have done had they not just been through their most damaging period since the peace process began. But this vote shows that even after such a period of negative publicity, many of their supporters do not see concerns about links to criminality as a reason for not voting for them.
The Green Party vote is virtually unchanged in Meath at just above 3 per cent and Kildare North at 6 per cent. The party is continuing to fail to make a significant impact in constituencies where its concerns about quality of life, proper development of transport links and the quality of the environment should strike a chord with many voters suffering the side-effects of poor planning for rapid economic growth.
The reality that these byelections say very little about what will happen in the next general election is illustrated most clearly by the reaction of the main parties to Catherine Murphy's win. None is in the slightest bit surprised that an Independent, almost unheard of outside her constituency and who didn't even run in 2002, has been elected. Despite all the pre-campaign Opposition talk of how this was a crucial test for the Government, all parties recognise that byelections produce unusual results and say very little about the shape of national politics.