Adrian Kavanagh, 8th February 2011
There’s various predictions being made as to how the seats will break down in the next (31st) Dail, some of which include the December 2010 Newstalk local prediction survey and others involving predictions being made on the basis of constituency-level estimates based on national poll figures, as may be viewed in my politicalreform.ie posts. But one other way of getting a sense as to what the next Dail may look like is to look at the odds being offered by different bookies in terms of who is being predicted to win seats in the different constituencies. In this case, I’ve looked through the current odds being offered by Paddy Power bookmakers (as of 8.00am on 8/2/2011) and aggregated these together to see what the final result nationally would be if these results were to pan out in reality. The seats estimates that emerges is as follows: Fianna Fail 34/35, Fine Gael 66/65, Labour 38, Green Party 0, Sinn Fein 14, Others 16 (breaking down evenly between 8 left-leaning and 8 right-leaning independent/small party candidates). (In the case of Wicklow, the final seat is viewed as a toss up between FG’s Simon Harris and FF’s Dick Roche.)
The seats per constituency based on the Paddy Power odds would look as follows (in this case assuming final Wicklow seat falls to Harris FG):
| FF | FG | LB | GP | SF | OTH | |
| Carlow-Kilkenny | 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Cavan-Monaghan | 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Clare | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Cork East | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Cork North Central | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Cork North West | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Cork South Central | 2 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Cork South West | 2 | 1 | ||||
| Donegal North East | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Donegal South West | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Dublin Central | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Dublin Mid West | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Dublin North | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Dublin North Central | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Dublin North East | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Dublin North West | 2 | 1 | ||||
| Dublin South | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Dublin South Central | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | ||
| Dublin South East | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Dublin South West | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Dublin West | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Dun Laoghaire | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Galway East | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Galway West | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Kerry North-West Limerick | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Kerry South | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Kildare North | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Kildare South | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Laois-Offaly | 2 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Limerick City | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Limerick | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Longford-Westmeath | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Louth | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Mayo | 1 | 4 | ||||
| Meath East | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Meath West | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Roscommon-South Leitrim | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Sligo-North Leitrim | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Tipperary North | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Tipperary South | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Waterford | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Wexford | 2 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Wicklow | 3 | 2 | ||||
| STATE | 34 | 66 | 38 | 0 | 12 | 16 |
Adrian Kavanagh's Blog 
February 10, 2011 at 9:44 am |
Seems to me that they are underestimating the potential surge in independents – most inds. they tip are or were TDs (I count three exceptions). Macdara Blaney in Donegal NE must have a big chance.
February 11, 2011 at 12:41 pm |
In fairness to PP, Dara Blaney hadn’t entered by the time they’d published these odds, but suspect natural inclination of odds-makers is to edge towards larger parties! Potential to make a few bob me’thinks!!!