Itās a role for a ballsy guy.
The Blueshirt rank and file rejecting Leo.
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Ireland is not ready for a shirtlifter
Yes, Farmer Simon ahead by a by close to 2 to 1 margin among members. Quite a shellacking from members for the man who in all likelihood will emerge as winner later today. It does appear that a combination of Coveney turning in a strong performance plus resentment among members for the way the TDs stitched it up has led to quite the backlash.
While there will be egg on face tonight, it does go to show that FG structured this quite cleverly to ensure that the parliamentary party wonāt be overridden - let the members have their say but structure it in such a way as itās virtually impossible to override the parliamentary party. No danger of a repeat of fate suffered by parties in other jurisdictions who allowed their members to select their candidate/leader ā although as last November showed and next Thursday (according to @Sidney) those same memberships chose the winner.
Iām not up to speed on the arcane system FG uses to elect their leader, but this is a huge embarrassment for Leo. How many TDs would Coveney have to flip to get his nose in front now?
Surely there will be a few nervous Leo supporters fretting about their Dail seats on the back of this disastrous performance.
The lovely Kate OāConnell was bang on the mark in her observations about the choir. Munster deputies like Pat Breen, Joe Carey, Patrick OāDonovan, Tom Neville and possibly Brendan Griffin would have been felt to be Coveney supporters but rowed in behind Dr Leo. Ditto with Frances Fitzgerald and Charlie Flanagan from the cabinet.
Kate could be the most cunning and most devious of them all 
.
Ordinary membership only counts for 10% of the vote as far as I am aware.
Parliamentary party counts 65% with councillors making up the remaining 25%.
The votes aināt counted yet.
Covers would need 70% of the membership vote to win ā¦ think he is at 65 currently and dropping.
Iād say he could get 100% and still not win.
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This bodes very badly for Varadkar.
If he canāt get the support of the ordinary members of Fine Gael, heāll struggle badly to attract floating voters and could drive away a significant portion of Fine Gaelās existing vote.
Of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, Kate OāConnell is more in touch than anybody with the real Ireland, having a foot in both rural and urban camps as well as running a small business which necessitates constant face to face interaction with the public. She looks to have got the mood of the public spot on and itās now clear that a lot more Fine Gael TDs should have listened to her instead of staying cocooned in their Leinster House echo chamber.
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65-35 to Coveney the final tally among the ordinary members.
Coveney apparently needs six defections from the parliamentary party to win.
Coveney only needs to flip 6 TDs to win according to Gavan Reilly, game on surely?
I think itās six TDs and senators he needs to flip.
You never knowā¦
A vixen
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Membership is 25% of the vote, not 10% as I earlier stated.
Councillors are 10%.
Coveney needs 7 TDs/senators to flip, says Philip Boucher-Hayes.
Internal politics in Ireland has a history of welching on promises . Let us see.
The colley effect