{"id":463282,"date":"2026-05-23T11:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T11:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/463282\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T11:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T11:12:08","slug":"tight-race-as-early-galway-west-votes-tallied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/463282\/","title":{"rendered":"Tight race as early Galway West votes tallied"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early tallies in the Galway West bye-election are showing strong showings from Fine Gael&#8217;s Se\u00e1n Kyne, the city&#8217;s mayor Mike Cubbard and Labour&#8217;s Helen Ogbu.<\/p>\n<p>Tallies are unofficial figures compiled by observers at count centres.<\/p>\n<p>A tally on a quarter of the ballot boxes in Galway West puts Mr Kyne in first place, with 18% of first preferences.<\/p>\n<p>He is followed in second place by Ms Ogbu and Noel Thomas of Independent Ireland, both on 15%.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cubbard is now on 11%.<\/p>\n<p>A co-ordinated, cross-party tally is being carried out, with participation from a number of independent candidates and several political parties.<\/p>\n<p>Turnout is running at 39% on boxes tallied so far.<\/p>\n<p>Boxes from rural areas across Conamara, as well as those from the west side of Galway city, Oranmore and Baile Chl\u00e1ir will be opened as the morning progresses.<\/p>\n<p>The bye-election will decide who replaces Catherine Connolly, who vacated her seat automatically upon being elected the 10th President of Ireland last November.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/2026\/0523\/1574840-bye-election-tracker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Follow live updates on the Galway West and Dublin Central bye-elections<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The full list of Galway West candidates is:<\/p>\n<p>N\u00e9ill Bair\u00e9ad (Independent)<\/p>\n<p>AJ Cahill (The Irish People)<\/p>\n<p>Mike Cubbard (Independent)<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Feeney (Independent)<\/p>\n<p>Sheila Garrity (Independent)<\/p>\n<p>Cillian Keane (Fianna F\u00e1il)<\/p>\n<p>Se\u00e1n Kyne (Fine Gael)<\/p>\n<p>Mark Lohan (Sinn F\u00e9in)<\/p>\n<p>Niall Murphy (Green Party)<\/p>\n<p>M\u00edde Nic Fhionnlaoich (Social Democrats)<\/p>\n<p>Orla Nugent (Aont\u00fa)<\/p>\n<p>Helen Ogbu (The Labour Party)<\/p>\n<p>John O&#8217;Leary (Independent)<\/p>\n<p>Denman Rooke (People Before Profit)<\/p>\n<p>Michael Ryan (Independent)<\/p>\n<p>Noel Thomas (Independent Ireland)<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Welby (Independent)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early tallies in the Galway West bye-election are showing strong showings from Fine Gael&#8217;s Se\u00e1n Kyne, the city&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-463282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}