Gerry Adams is not set to win a seat, in fact his position is quite dodgy. There's a strong feeling of revolt in him being elected in the constituency he's running in (Louth).
He's safely won his seat, on his 1st Pref. Votes, even though the hurdle in
his district Louth is higher than normal - the speaker of the house, Seamus Kirk, who is automatically re-elected, also stands candidate in the same district, so only 4 instead of 5 seats are contested.
But one thing is certain, Fianna Fail will be decimated in their seats in the Dail (Irish Parliament). Some polls have them at retaining maybe 20 seats as opposed to their 78 seats last time out.
With 131 of 166 seats counted, they're at 14 (including said speaker), so 20 might even be optimistic.
Can someone explain the finer details of (the Irish implementation of) the STV system?
I've looked at the
results page of the RTE and clicked on some districts, and read some explanations (
here and
here) and the general principle is clear.
The quota to get elected is: #votes / (#seats + 1) + 1. At first count, ballots are counted on their 1st Pref. Vote. At each subsequent count, the last ranked candidate is eliminated and their votes go to the respective candidates listed next in preference on their ballots; or when, say, the last three candidates together have less votes than the fourth-last, all three are eliminated at once.
But it's not 100% clear to me what happens with the "surplus votes". The two explanations given above say that votes that go over the quota are considered "surplus votes" and they are distributed among the next preference. Take
district Louth as an example. Gerry Adams was elected at the first count, and he had 1208 surplus votes. So the ballots with Adams as first preference are divided on their second preference, and in proportion to those second preferences, 1208 votes are divided among the other candidates. That is what happened at the second count in Louth - where no candidate was yet eliminated.
One of the write-ups I linked to above says:
The resultant number of next preferences for each continuing candidate to be transferred as part of the surplus distribution is taken from the top of his/her sub-parcel of next preferences made up from the last parcel of votes received by the elected candidate.
Does that mean that physically, an appropriate number of the ballot papers is picked at random and allotted to the other candidates? Doesn't this mean there is a certain chance in the outcome of the election? These ballot papers have been divided on their second preference only. There were in total about 50 ballots with Adams as first preference and Glynn (the last candidate) as second preference. Of the 15072 ballots with Adams as first preference, 1208 had to be divided among the other candidates, so 4 went to Glynn. When Glynn is eliminated after the second count, these 4 ballot papers go to their third preference. However, they are picked randomly from a stack of 50, and depending on which are picked, they can influence the rest of the counting.
