Three-way race for Catherine Connolly's seat in Galway-West

A three-way race has emerged in the Galway-West constituency by-election, a poll from IPSOS has revealed.

Voters were asked to rank the candidates as first and second choice votes.

Of the three front-runners Fine Gael Senator Sean Kyne (17%) holds a slight advantage over Noel Thomas of Independent Ireland (16%), with Helen Ogbu of The Labour Party further behind but still in the race (12%).

The 2024 General Election results suggest this is Fine Gael’s seat to lose as Minister for Health Hildegrade Naughton and Sean Kyne together secured 19 percent of the vote. Noel Thomas received 365 (0.4% of the ballot) more first preference votes than Kyne in 2024, so the margins are razor thin.

Kyne is looking to win the seat that he lost in the 2020 election and failed to claim back in 2024, missing out on what would have been a significant number of transfers if his running mate Hildegrade-Naughton had been elected on an earlier count. Since his failed reelection bid he has been working as a senator in the Seanad, the upper house of the Oireachtas.

Noel Thomas is a former member of Fianna Fáil who left the party in 2024 after his comments on an IPAS centre that was subject to an arson attack. Thomas and fellow councillor Séamus Walsh made controversial comments, with Thomas saying that "the inn is full". He subsequently resigned from the party citing the leadership's reaction to the situation as a primary reason for his departure.

The Galway West seat is vacant after Catherine Connolly was elected as Uachtarán na hÉireann last year. Her campaign manager, Sheila Garrity, is not the front runner of the left-alliance as was previously speculated. She’s well back at 3%. It looks like it will be Helen Ogbu who will be the benefactor of those left-alliance transfers.

Ogbu moved to Ireland in the mid 2000s after seeking refuge from Nigeria. Her husband received death threats and was later murdered for his political activity. Elected to the Galway City Council in June 2024, she later ran for that year's General Election but was eliminated on 8th count.

Now Ogbu is poised to be the front-runner of the left alliance in Galway. Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich of the Social Democrats, Mark Lohan of the Greens and Denman Rooke of People Before Profit Solidarity are all positioned to send crucial transfers in Ogbu's direction.

Independent candidate Thomas Welby could find himself in the race in the later counts. He is polled at 14% of second choice preferences despite only being at 6% for first preferences. A close ally of Minister of State Noel Grelaish it could be posited that a large amount of these second choices could come from governing party candidate Sean Kyne and hence may not prove very useful as he is very unlikely to be eliminated.