Anti-Sinn Féin campaign cost Fianna Fáil Meath seat

Fianna Fáil's campaign of vilification against Sinn Féin cost Fianna Fáil the by-election seat in Meath when Sinn Féin voters plumped rather than transfered to the Government party.

Out of a combined Sinn Féin and Labour transfer of 13,575, over 4,000 votes – predominantly for Sinn Féin – did not transfer, leaving Fine Gael with a victory margin of less than 3,000 votes.

Nevertheless, while this seat was there for the winning for the Government party, Fine Gael's performance in topping the poll and pushing their vote well over 30 per cent was outstanding. Once again they have confounded pundits, opinion polls and common sense and have achieved what amounts to a repeat of their local-election success last summer. Party morale has been given a huge boost, and this will make them more determined than ever that any alternative government will have more of a Fine Gael than a Labour character.

Labour, in fact, did very well in Meath, increasing their percentage share of the vote two and a half times over their general election result, and placing Dominic Hannigan in serious contention for a seat next time round in Meath East. But Labour will be very disappointed that they did so poorly in Kildare, with Paddy McNamara ending up in fourth place with his vote largely swallowed up by left-independent Catherine Murphy. And many in the party will wonder again who really gets the benefit of voting pacts with Fine Gael.

Sinn Féin are naturally delighted. Their increased percentage vote shows that they can weather the storm of abuse heaped upon them and that their vote can be expected to grow again in the next general election with more Dáil seats in prospect. But they will be concerned that their difficulties in attracting transfers have increased.

Some of the media, of course, have attempted to rationalise their increased vote away, saying that the increased percentage is due only to the lower voter turnout.

That's like saying that Fine Gael dropped votes (which they did) or that they didn't recover their 1999 share of the vote (which they didn't) while ignoring the impact the party made in the actual contest.

However, while Joe Reilly's vote was strongest in the western part of the constituency, which will form the core of the new Meath West constituency, it is hard to see him taking a general election seat unless he can bring his core vote up to 20 per cent. Preventing that was, of course, the purpose of gerrymandering the present Meath five-seater into two three-seaters.

Still, Sinn Féin too have got a morale boost from this result, and they are now eagerly looking forward to the Westminster elections in the North when they expect to trounce their critics and deal further hammer blows to the SDLP.

But what of the Government? Recent opinion polls have indicated that the tide was turning for the Government and that support lost in the first two years of this administration was coming back. Too much should not be read into a by-election result, but the Meath result in particular will have been unwelcome news.

Of course, Government spin doctors will reiterate the old line that governments don't win by-elections, but Meath was one they should have won – even with Fine Gael increasing their vote as dramatically as they did. The lesson of the Sinn Féin plumpers will have to be learned. Fianna Fáil will need Sinn Féin transfers to defeat the Rainbow alternative, and following Michael McDowell around like a tame poodle won't win those transfers. At the end of the day, that may please The Irish Times and Dublin 4, but these people don't vote Fianna Fáil anyway.

Fianna Fáil's problem is that they want to discourage votes for and transfers to Sinn Féin, because that party is a long-term threat to Fianna Fáil's base, like it was to the SDLP; but they want Sinn Féin voters to be well-disposed enough towards Fianna Fáil to transfer to them. The short-term price of trying to have their cake and eat it may well be putting the Rainbow in power while failing to stop the forward march of Sinn Féin.

For the PDs, the by-elections are less problematic. As a marginal makeweight party they don't really figure in these contests. They will be disappointed that Kate Walsh dropped back to eight per cent from the heady 12 per cent of the general election, but pleased enough with Serena Campbell's five per cent in Meath.

Walsh, of course, was an independent before she joined the PDs and has her own core base (43 per cent of the Celbridge vote in the 1999 local elections), and her transfers split evenly between Fianna Fáil and the independent Catherine Murphy. Fianna Fáil will be disappointed with that. But the real talking point here, of course, is Catherine Murphy. In the general election Kildare North becomes a four-seater, and on these figures Murphy looks set to hold her seat with one each for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour.

Focal Scoir (last word): Confession time, and my predictions didn't turn out 100 per cent. I thought Fianna Fáil would take the Meath seat because I doubted whether Fine Gael could get their vote over 30 per cent and I thought Sinn Féin would transfer to them in larger numbers. Fine Gael did get the numbers out, and Sinn Féin didn't transfer. I did, however, predict Sinn Féin's increased percentage support, on the button at 12 per cent.

In Kildare North, I got it wrong too. I thought Labour would do much better and that they would be ahead of Catherine Murphy. In the event, they were well behind. I got the rest right though, including predicting that Kate Walsh would get eight per cent of the vote. You win some; you lose some.

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity