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Abstract
Polling for elections to the 29 county and five city councils was held between 7:00 and 21:00 on Friday, 11 June 2004. The general expectation was that the two largest parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, would lose seats in these elections – especially given their relatively strong performances in the 1999 local elections – and that Sinn Féin would make significant gains, particularly in Dublin and other large urban centres. The elections were also expected to mark yet another stage in the trend of continuing turnout decline that has marked Irish elections over the past 25 years, with the national turnout expected to be lower than the 1999 level of 50.3 per cent, the lowest ever turnout for local elections in the history of the state. As it transpired, turnout increased significantly in these elections, particularly in Dublin and the rest of the East region. Voting patterns also changed dramatically, with Sinn Féin, Labour and other smaller left‐wing parties increasing their support and representation levels, particularly in Dublin, while losses for Fianna Fáil proved to be even greater than had been anticipated. Fine Gael confounded the pundits by actually increasing their number of council seats, even though their share of the vote declined marginally.
Acknowledgements
General election turnout statistics for the Boyle and Ballymahon electoral areas were drawn from the findings of a project undertaking an Electoral Division analysis of turnouts in the 2002 general election, under the Institute for Study of Social Change, UCD, and the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, NUI Maynooth. Turnout statistics used in this article are drawn from secondary analyses of electoral figures in CitationSean Donnelly's Elections '99 and those published in Citation The Irish Times on the Monday after the 2004 local elections. Tally figures for the Castlerea electoral area, referred to in this article, were published in the Roscommon Champion and Roscommon Herald newspapers in the week following the local elections.