A total of 92,315 people are eligible to go to the polls today in Mayo with 200 having already voted on the islands yesterday, where there were 121 eligible voters on Clare Island, 29 qualified voters on Inishbiggle and 50 registered voters on Inishturk. The 92,315 eligible voters in Mayo represents a drop of 8,645 from the 2011 General Election, with the majority of those votes in the south Mayo region now being cast in the Galway West - South Mayo constituency. The number of eligible voters does not include postal voters or special voters. The figures were released by returning officer Fintan Murphy on Wednesday afternoon, and he will be the man who will be running the show in the count centre in Castlebar on Saturday when the boxes are opened at 9am.
In Mayo there was a very large turnout in 2011 when 74,154 or the eligible voters had their say, giving a turnout of 73 per cent, in the 2007 general election there was also 73 per cent turnout when 72,086 voted. In 2007 there was 700 spoilt votes, just shy of one per cent, while in 2011 there were 790 spoilt ballot papers returned. There are 212 different voting boxes spread all over the county, divided by the four local authority Municipal districts, with 53 in the Ballina area, 55 in the Castlebar area, 37 in the Claremorris area and 67 in the geographically large West Mayo area.
Expectations are that the trio of An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Minister of State Michael Ring and Fianna Fáil's Dara Calleary TD will all retain their seats in this election, with a big battle for the last seat where the sitting Fine Gael TD Michelle Mulherin is being challenged by two very formidable candidates in the shape of Sinn Féin's Cllr Rose Conway-Walsh and Fianna Fáil's Cllr Lisa Chambers.
Last time out Mulherin polled just shy of 12 per cent of the first preference vote, with Conway-Walsh polling 3.59 per cent of the first preference vote (Sinn Féin ran a two person ticket in 2011, so combined with her then running mate Cllr Therese Ruane, the party polled just under 6.5 per cent of the first preference votes ). Cllr Chambers was a relative unknown in 2011 and was a late entrant in the race; she received 4.5 per cent of the first preference vote and is expecting to get a much bigger return of number ones this time around. The battle for this final seat could have a lot to do with which candidate is most transfer friendly, while last time both Enda Kenny and Michael Ring flew past the quota with a few thousand votes to spare, with transfers fairly evenly redistributed to their two party colleagues at the time. The expectation is that there won't be as large a surplus to aid Mulherin's battle this time around.
The Mayo Advertiser will be at the election count from the opening of the boxes until the final seat is called, you can follow all the action tomorrow on www.advertiser.ie/mayo and on our social media channels on Facebook and Twitter.
