Transfers between Fianna Fail candidates in individual constituencies have been weakening in recent elections. So, for example, fewer people who vote number one for a Fianna Fail candidate now give their number two to another candidate from that party. Research by Michael Gallagher at Trinity College shows that only 63% of those who gave a first-preference vote to a Fianna Fail candidate went on to give a secondpreference vote to another Fianna Fail candidate. In the elections before 1992, this figure was running at over 80%. Fine Gael has experienced a similar change.

Gallagher attributes this decline in internal vote management to the growth of personality campaigns, where individuals stress themselves over their place on the party ticket and their running mates.

Better internal transfer rates would have given Fianna Fail extra seats in 2002 in Galway West and Kildare North, while Fine Gael could have won five more seats (Donegal North East, Dublin South East, Dun Laoghaire, Kerry South and Kildare South). With better vote management between candidates, Labour would have won additional seats in Carlow-Kilkenny and Wicklow. Alongside transfer rates between candidates from the same party, seats are also won and lost on transfers received from election rivals. Fianna Fail under Bertie Ahern has been more open to receiving transfers from other parties, but strategic voting against Fianna Fail candidates in 2002 cost the party five seats it might have won with a more 'neutral' transfer pattern.

Interestingly, the sources of the votes that determine the ultimate seat outcome were not always what would have been expected in 2002. For example, in Kerry North, transfers from Fianna Fail helped Jimmy Deenihan of Fine Gael at the expense of Labour's Dick Spring. In Dublin North Central, Derek McDowell of Labour lost out as transfers from Sinn Fein and the Greens favoured Independent Finian McGrath. It was a different situation in Dublin South East, where Labour's Ruairi Quinn was helped by Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail transfers at the expense of Frances Fitzgerald of Fine Gael. So transfers matter, but not as much as we're often lead to believe and, for the candidates, not at all if they can get enough first preferences to reach the quota on the first count.

They have 'something about Mary' in Dublin South East, which, according to Ruairi Quinn, is "one of the most liberal and progressive constituencies" in the country. The former Labour leader makes the claim in a new publication (written by Quinn and Ross Higgins) which charts the history of the constituency.

Taking in Rathmines, Ranelagh and the parts of the south inner city, it is a place that wants big in terms of political representation, with TDs over the last 80 years including John A Costello, Sean MacEntee, Noel Browne and Garret FitzGerald.

However, to their shame, the voters in Dublin South East have also resoundingly rejected three of Ireland's most successful women politicians . . . Mary Robinson (in 1977 in the now defunct Dublin Rathmines), Mary Harney (also in 1977) and Mary McAleese (in 1987).