While it may have been overshadowed by the same sex marriage referendum, the result of the Carlow-Kilkenny by-election could give the clearest indication yet of the outcome of the forthcoming general election.

While the bookies have Fianna Fail candidate, Bobby Aylward, odds on favourite to win the seat, that is no guarantee of success as was demonstrated in both the Roscommon-South Leitrim and Dublin South-West by-elections last October. Although it will be a major shock if anyone other than Aylward or Fine Gael candidate David Fitzgerald is in the final shakeup, the performances of several other candidates will have a decisive impact on who replaces Phil Hogan in Leinster House.

In 2011 Fine Gael took three seats in the constituency for the first time in their history thanks to a 39% share of the vote which was their biggest since 1927 and the two seats gained were directly at the expense of Fianna Fail who got their lowest share (28%) since 1927.

In the 2014 local elections Fianna Fail candidates had a 5% point margin over their Fine Gael counterparts, 34%-29%, although some 15,000 thousand less people voted than in 2011 with the combined FG-Labour vote down by 17,000. Should Fianna Fail repeat their 2014 performance (a lead of almost 3,000 votes) then they will almost certainly win the seat as you have to go back to 1976 for a first count lead of that magnitude to be overhauled.  On that occasion in Dublin South-West Labour’s Brendan Halligan clawed back a deficit of 2,800 to Eileen Lemass of Fianna Fail thanks to transfers from Fine Gael’s Jim Mitchell.

The battle for third place is probably between Labour’s Willie Quinn and Kathleen Funchion of Sinn Fein. In 2014 Labour garnered over 7,000 votes which were some 2,000 more than in any other constituency in the country and Quinn will be hoping to retain that vote and use it as a springboard for the general election when the intent will be to keep the seat won by Ann Phelan in 2011. Quinn has the advantage of being the only mainstream Carlow based candidate and as has been seen in other two-county constituencies, voters in the smaller county like to favour a local based candidate irrespective of party allegiance.

Sinn Fein is clearly positioning itself to win a seat at the general election and since 2007 Kathleen Funchion has been groomed to make the breakthrough.  She was one of the six Sinn Fein Councillors elected for the first time in 2014 in the constituency and while she will not win on Friday, if she can build on the 10.7% share her party got last year she will be a serious threat to succeed in 2016.

The unknown factor in this election is trying to gauge how Renua Ireland will perform. Launched in a blaze of publicity (not all of it positive) earlier this year this will be the first opportunity for the electorate to express an opinion at the ballot box on their relevance to Irish politics. They have been able to throw all their resources at a single constituency which is a luxury that they will not have when, as they have stated, they will be contesting all forty constituencies at the general election. The party is perceived to have evolved from a socially conservative opposition to the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill which resulted in several TD’s, led by Lucinda Creighton, leaving Fine Gael. Given that there will also be a referendum on Friday that will attract significant numbers of what are perceived to be socially conservative voters this may help attract voters to the Renua Ireland candidate Patrick McKee. It should be noted that Lucinda Creighton is on the record as supporting a yes vote but a number of other leading lights in the party have been reticent in endorsing her support.  McKee is a young Councillor who was elected for Fianna Fail in Kilkenny City in 2014 but when it became clear that he would not get the Fianna Fail nomination for the by-election decided to throw in his lot with Renua Ireland. While Friday’s result will not definitively define the future of the party it will give some guidance on whether or not it has the capacity to attract sufficient votes to make an impact on the electoral stage. However recent opinion polls that have included the party in their sampling has recorded their core support at 1% and the actual result will need to be significantly better than that if they are to generate additional support in the coming months.

There are eight other candidates but the evidence of 2014 suggests that none of the Independents or representatives of smaller parties will have much of an impact. Indeed the most likely candidate to make the top six is Malcolm Noonan of the Green Party who is part of something of a revival for the party that was obliterated in 2011.

Monday’s Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll has Fine Gael and Fianna Fail neck and neck in the rest of Leinster at 24% each which would, if reflected in Carlow-Kilkenny, mean the advantage gained by Fianna Fail in 2014 has evaporated. The result would then be highly dependent on transfers with Fine Gael hoping that Labour supporters give more second preferences to them than Sinn Fein do to Fianna Fail. Recent by-elections suggest that the former is more likely with Sinn Fein still having very high levels of non-transferable votes.

Failure to win another by-election for which they are favourites would be damaging to Michael Martin, particularly as it is in the constituency of one of his fiercest critics in John McGuinness. Should Fine Gael prevail and retain the seat of the architect of property tax and water charges then Enda Kenny may well feel that the worst is over and his dream of a second term is still alive. 

RESULTS IN 2011 AND 2014