A brilliant story.
No doubt the main story of the election is the strong performance of Sinn Féin across the country, especially in areas where they’ve historically not held seats.
As of Monday morning, 29 Sinn Féin candidates have been elected with more in contention as the counting continues today.
But another big story of the weekend was the performance of Fianna Fáil’s Christopher O’Sullivan and the Social Democrats’ Holly Cairns in Cork South-West.
While the general election had the potential to be a flashpoint, the dramatic result ensures there will be no political conflict between the couple as both secured seats in the 33rd Dáil.
Cairns was elected as a Cork county councillor last year with the Social Democrats, while O’Sullivan topped the poll in the same election for Fianna Fáil and became mayor of the council.
They both ran for the Dáil this time around in the three seater Cork South-West constituency.
The count continued until nearly 4am on Monday morning when on the eighth count, Cairns leapfrogged Fine Gael’s Tim Lombard.
Cairns had looked dead and buried having been over 2,000 votes behind Lombard going into the final round of counting, but the redistribution of votes from Sinn Fein’s Paul Hayes saw her pick up over 3,000 transfer votes to jump ahead of the Fine Gael candidate.
WE DID IT! #GE2020
— Holly Cairns TD (@HollyCairnsTD) February 10, 2020
O’Sullivan was elected on the same count, but had looked assured of his seat throughout having been in second place for most of the counting.
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