Mark Little
Prime Time

It contains some indication of which segments of the population the various parties and candidates draw their strength from.

Sinn Féin candidates polled strongest among the unemployed. The candidate in Dublin, Mary Lou McDonald, got 14.7% of the first preference vote, according to our exit poll, but she got 32.4% of the long-term unemployed voters.

Sinn Féin also did very well among single men, particularly in Europe South where
Toiréasa Ferris got 13.7% of vote, according to our poll, but 22% of the votes of single men. Go figure!

Mark Little
Prime Time

I’ve been going through some of the wreckage of the election and I thought I might share some rough observations.

To begin …

One of the striking things about this election is the divide between urban and rural voters. This may always have been the case, but there is evidence from this election that the divide is getting more pronounced and more consequential for the next few years in our political life.

Mark Little
Prime Time

Looking through the exit poll, I am struck by a lack of any dramatic shift in the political attitudes of young people, at least in the European elections.

In the Euros, the poll finds the Fianna Fáil vote among 18 to 24 year olds is exactly the same as the overall level (in the local elections, it’s actually 1% higher!)

The ballot boxes are being sorted and counted and the first results are due in the early afternoon.

We’ll have full results on RTÉ.ie with lots of nice graphs, tables and charts once they start rolling in.

Keep up with the latest news on the exit polls, tallies and results through the RTÉ Elections 2009 website.

As you may expect we're quite busy at present preparing for the weekend. You can be assured RTÉ will bring you all the coverage you need, it's possible to check out just how much the elections will feature in our broadcasting in the coming days right here.

We've also put together a very quick photo gallery of the Election 2009 studio being prepared, see that by clicking here. Over the weekend on RTÉ.ie we will have a continuously updated tracker, reports from journalists in count centres across the country and photographs from the main count centre, the RDS. Not mention a few blog reports to keep you satisfied.

By Mark Little

I kicked off my bank holiday weekend with a trip to Carrick-on-Shannon where I joined Fianna Fail’s Paschal Mooney on the campaign trail. This was home turf for the former radio star and there was a curious lack of dissident voices on the street. But despite the absence of debate, I got a fascinating insight into the psyche of Fianna Fail in the face of a political headwind.

The first thing that strikes you is Paschal’s memory for names and faces - he greets everyone he meets as if they were long lost relative. He comes across a bride and groom at the Bush hotel, arriving in a Rolls Royce. He knows the woman and plants a kiss on her lips before telling her she looks beautiful. He relates her life story as we walk away.

We posted a few Youtube videos this day last week relating to the Euro elections. During our internet rambling over the last few days we found a few more - some of them are, eh, rather ‘unique’.

Here are a few videos from the official European Parliament Youtube account –

First one, “You Decide Tomorrow’s Headlines”, there’s an Irish accent or two in there….

By Mark Little

I have just finished my trip down the Shannon, arriving Thursday at the Limerick Institute of Technology, meeting a group of unemployed workers being eased back into education and towards new skills. 

The purpose of the trip – from Carrick-on-Shannon to Limerick - was to find out what issues are shaping the European elections in three of the four Irish constituencies. I expected to find scepticism about Europe, anger at the Government and a whole host of local concerns, and they all were certainly present in some form at every stop. But I also discovered links between European politics and parochial Irish realities that I never expected to find, like the EU funds that will help retrain those Limerick workers.

By Mark Little

I’ve come to the end of another day on the Shannon, searching for the issues that will decide the outcome of these Euro elections.

I still have a chill in my bones after a spin on the choppy waters of Lough Ree with out-of-work eel fisherman Seamus Mulvihill. For thirty years, he’s been pullings eels from the waters around Coosan Point, just north of Athlone, but that career came to a sudden end in the last fortnight.

The Government has just banned eel fishing, citing an EU directive. It’s a decision the fishermen say will lead to the loss of 500 jobs, some permanent, some part-time. ‘They just turned their backs on us,’ Seamus says, ‘and thought we’d go away.’ But these men are not going away. They have become a loud, active and very angry presence on the European election trail, especially in the north-west constituency. ‘They’re going to hear about us on polling day,’ Seamus promises.

As regular readers of this blog will know, we at RTÉ have been looking for your input for our coverage of the forthcoming elections. So far a slew of questions have been sent to us through both Twitter and email - every one of them has been forwarded onto our presenters. Mark and Miriam will be using them as part of their research before the Prime Time election specials that they will be presenting in the coming days.

By Mark Little

We got the first edition of Campaign Daily out without any major mishaps this Monday afternoon. The programme was born out of the 2007 general election and – this time around - devotes a full hour between noon and 1PM to the issues and personalities shaping the European elections, local elections and two Dublin by-elections.

It’s one of those shows that rewards you for paying attention (and that goes for the presenter as well as the viewer). The centre-piece today was the battle for the massive North-West constituency which touches 11 counties from Killybegs to Kinnegad. The colour of the campaign trail was captured in a nicely paced piece from RTE’s North-West Correspondent Eileen Magnier.

By Cian McCormack
Morning Ireland

After a week on the road trying to find out whether all politics is local, it's difficult to say whether there is a definitive answer. At the start of the week, particularly the first day, in Carlow and Tipperary, it seemed as if the local election was being dominated by national issues.

Producer/Director - Prime Time

Getting up on a Monday morning can be hard at the best of times - even more so when it has to be done at 5am in order to start work in Cork by nine. But somehow, with just a few hours' sleep due to an overactive imagination and a brain that wanted to start filming sequences before I did, I managed it. The whole concept of the report I was on my way to film was that Miriam would go on a journey around the Rebel County to find out the innermost thoughts and feelings of the people of Cork ahead of what will undoubtedly be the most interesting local elections of recent times. And while I'd managed to get myself out at such an early hour, unfortunately, I'd failed to remember one crucial thing - the suit bag with all my shirts for the week. So one u-turn and a sneaky nap later, we were in Cork and ready to roll.

RTÉ.ie takes a look at some of the local election stories from regional newspaper websites around Ireland.

By Mark Little

If you are looking for reasons to vote but not necessarily guidance on who to vote for then check out this series of promotions on YouTube.

There’s a slightly banal public-service feel to the first of the official ads...

By Miriam O'Callaghan

I came back from filming some of our local election coverage in Cork yesterday afternoon to do last night’s Prime Time on the child abuse report. It was genuinely one of the most emotional programmes I have ever been involved in and a world apart from elections and election coverage. For me, it put everything else that we do on the programme in the shade.

By Mark Little

The long lazy arc of the Meelick weir stretches across the swollen River Shannon at the meeting point of three of the nation’s four provinces. It is also a unique political junction: the meeting point of three of the four constituencies in the European elections.

I was standing on the Galway side of the river in the North-West constituency yesterday afternoon. On the other side is Offaly and the East constituency and at some point on its journey across the river, the weir enters Tipperary waters and the South constituency.

As Prime Time’s A-team, Samantha, Nick and Pat, grappled with the problems of filming in bad light and periodic blasts of rain, I got a chance to stroll out on the weir to take in the majesty of the Shannon and the comforting sound of the rushing brown water.

The river runs through this part of Ireland like a central artery, sustaining life and providing a boundary to it, but also making it more complicated.

By Miriam O'Callaghan

Most of Wednesday was spent in Cobh. We left for there by train that morning from Cork Station - loved chatting to all the workers at the train station. I got the distinct impression once again (once we moved off the Late Late) that there are a lot of disgruntled people heading out to vote on June 5th.  I spoke to a very accessible and understandable local politics academic from UCC on the train on the way to Cork, Aodh Quinlivan, and he gave us a very comprehensive analysis of the upcoming elections. In Cobh, a really diverse but interesting group of women (gathered by our hard working researcher Conor) gave me a variety of views - well balanced between those who are going to be voting to register a vote as a protest against the Government and those who aren't that angry and are going to vote on local issues.

By Mark Little

There’s a choice for a programme like Prime Time at election time, we can invite politicians and pundits into our studio to tell us what’s going on - or we can make a damn good effort to canvas as many voters as is humanly possible to find out what is on their minds. Now, we’ll do a bit of the former, but this time ‘round we’re determined to do as much of the latter as we possibly can, and we need your help.

My own task this election season is to work out what forces will shape the European Elections in Ireland. I am particularly interested in the great contradiction at play. We are about to take part in the biggest trans-national elections in world history with 736 MEPs elected to represent some 500 million Europeans. And yet it does seem that local and national issues - not the future of the European project - will shape the way people vote in each of the four Irish constituencies.

By Miriam O'Callaghan

I had a beautiful day on Tuesday here in Cork - I can see clearly now why Cork people love their city.

We've been here since Sunday night shooting a report on the local elections.

They rarely let me escape from the Prime Time office so I am having a ball and remembering what it was once like being a journalist on the road for Newsnight. If I'm being honest guys it's also great because it’s the first time in an age I actually managed to have a night’s unbroken sleep. The last few nights my precious three year old Jamie was not in my bed kicking my ribs, albeit with great affection.

Everyone seems to be incredibly articulate in Cork - my editor, Ken, who happens to come from this city, would say that should be no surprise. They are an interviewers dream as they love talking and to a man and woman, they have seriously strong views, especially on these elections.

My main problem to begin with was that everyone wanted to talk to me about the Late Late ‘saga’. I do engage on the topic for a while because they are so decent, but then rapidly steer them to the reason I am here - the upcoming local elections.

By Cian McCormack
Morning Ireland

We made it to Leitrim, after a short stop in Roscommon town.  Our few hours were revealing.

Richard Canny – editor of the Roscommon Champion – filled us in on the local political battles.

There was one unusual story featured on the newspaper’s front page about a local man who has declared for the local election with the same name as a longstanding councillor. There are fears that voters may be confused.

By Cian McCormack
Morning Ireland

Today we made it to Co Galway, and our first stop was Gort.

There local traders have decided that enough is enough, and they’ve just erected a sign on the town’s edge apologising to visitors about the lack of public toilets, the poor state of the roads, and the colour and the quality of the drinking water.

Chatting to people in the town, it’s clear that there is a lot of anger about this issue.

By Cian McCormack
Morning Ireland

There was something very striking travelling from the Glen of Aherlow to Listowel: Election posters.

Adorning every lamp post in every rural village, town, and city they ensure the passerby can get valuable face-time with candidates.

It's the party branding that's astounding – especially when it's so small that it's barely visible on posters.

By Cian McCormack
Morning Ireland

Over the next couple of days we'll be trying to find out whether all politics is local as we travel the country talking to voters, grassroots activists and councillors

However, already, from early conversations - as we've travelled from Dublin, via Carlow, to south Tipperary - local issues are taking second place to what's happening nationally.

On the doorstep there's a sense that, maybe, the local elections are a referendum on how the Government is performing.