Less than half turnout to vote in Cavan Town

County Town benefits Brendan Smith and Pauline Tully most.

According to tallies, just around half the registered electorate or less turned out to exercise their franchise in Cavan Town on polling day.

Tallies were counted in four Gaelscoil Bhreifne booths and 10 St Clare's Convent booths and none had a turnout above 54%; with some falling as low as 32% in one area.

Fewer than 50% cast their a vote in eight areas.

These were also among the last boxes opened, before West Cavan, and were hotly anticipated by candidates like Fianna Fáil's Brendan Smith and Sinn Féin's Pauline Tully who, until then, had been lagging behind their party colleagues.

By the time all the boxes in Cavan Town had opened, Tully had crept into fifth and Smith had begun to catch up with Niamh Smyth and Aontú's Sarah O'Reilly.

Smith edged Smyth in Cavan, by almost two to one in some boxes and sometimes more.

He got over 100 votes in one box, whereas Smyth's highest tally was still less than 50.

Smith ended with just over 800 votes out the 14 Cavan Town boxes, with Smyth getting 323 based on tally returns.

Tully also needed to do well here and she did, picking up more than 100 plus votes in two boxes and not getting less than 20 in any other. The remaining boxes all returned mid-double figures, ending with nearly 800.

Regardless of strict party vote management, number ones still went elsewhere within the party. Cathy Bennett (FF) was not expected to pull votes from this area but still emerged with double figures (in the teens) in three boxes- one from the Gaelscoil and two from St Clare's- ending up with close to 100 in her favour.

Matt Carthy meanwhile cleared almost 140 to his name.

Indeed Carthy and Bennett had the highest return of any of the Monaghan candidates on the list from Cavan Town.

For Fine Gael, Cavan Town was considered a free for all, and both TP O'Reilly and Carmel Brady got a share.

O'Reilly received decent double figure returns in all boxes, totalling 259, whereas Brady came away with slightly more (284).

Of the others, Aontú's Sarah O'Reilly got 224 people to give her their first tick, and Independent Ireland's Shane P O'Reilly earned less than half that.

Across the 14 boxes, the likes of Non-Party candidate Jimmy Mee got one vote, Joseph Duffy got three, and Feargal Deery got five.