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1959 Irish presidential election

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Election in Ireland

1959 Irish presidential election
← 1952 17 June 1959 1966 →
Turnout58.3%
  Éamon de Valera, President of Ireland, in 1960s (43915959314).jpg Seán Mac Eoin 1945 presidential election poster (cropped).png
Nominee Éamon de Valera Seán Mac Eoin
Party Fianna Fáil Fine Gael
Popular vote 538,003 417,536
Final percentage 56.3% 43.7%
President before election

Seán T. O'Kelly
Fianna Fáil

Elected President

Éamon de Valera
Fianna Fáil

The 1959 Irish presidential election was held on Wednesday, 17 June 1959. Éamon de Valera, then Taoiseach, was elected as president of Ireland. A referendum proposed by de Valera to replace the electoral system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote with first-past-the-post voting which was held on the same day was defeated by 48.2% to 51.8%.

Nomination process

Under Article 12 of the Constitution of Ireland, a candidate for president may be nominated by:

Outgoing president Seán T. O'Kelly had served two terms and was ineligible to serve again. On 27 April, the Minister for Local Government signed the ministerial order opening nominations, with noon on 19 May as the deadline for nominations, and 17 June set as the date for a contest. All Irish citizens on the Dáil electoral register were eligible to vote.

Éamon de Valera, who had served as President of Dáil Éireann and President of the Irish Republic from 1919 to 1922 during the Irish revolutionary period, as President of the Executive Council from 1932 to 1937, and as Taoiseach from 1937 to 1948, from 1951 to 1954, and again from 1957 until he was elected president, was nominated by Fianna Fáil on 12 May. He had served as Fianna Fáil's leader since its foundation in 1926.

Seán Mac Eoin, a Fine Gael TD who had been the party's candidate in the 1945 presidential election, was nominated again by the party on 15 May.

During the campaign, the far-right micro-party Lia Fáil called on its followers to support Seán Mac Eoin over de Valera. The party gave 25 reasons for this position, with some of those reasons being that de Valera "was an alien" (de Valera had been born in the United States, but had been raised and living in Ireland since the age of 2), was a puppet of the British, that he was "the darling" of Protestants, Freemasons and the British Army, and that "his satanic lust for power motivates every act of his life". The paper's reasons for supporting Mac Eoin were because he was "an honest-to-God Irishman of our flesh and blood whose father and mother we know" and his military background.

Patrick McCartan, who had also been a candidate in the 1945 election and had served as a senator for Clann na Poblachta from 1948 to 1951, was nominated by two county councils only, short of the four required for nomination. Eoin O'Mahony also sought and failed to secure a nomination by county councils.

Éamon de Valera was inaugurated as president on 25 June.

Result

1959 Irish presidential election
Candidate Nominated by % 1st Pref Count 1
Éamon de Valera Oireachtas: Fianna Fáil 56.3 538,003
Seán Mac Eoin Oireachtas: Fine Gael 43.7 417,536
Electorate: 1,678,450   Valid: 955,539   Spoilt: 24,089 (2.5%)   Quota: 477,770   Turnout: 58.3%
Popular vote
De Valera   56.3%
Mac Eoin   43.7%
Results by constituency
Constituency De Valera Mac Eoin
Votes % Votes %
Carlow–Kilkenny 20,023 58.0 14,521 42.0
Cavan 13,912 56.6 10,669 43.4
Clare 19,095 65.0 10,270 35.0
Cork Borough 19,390 55.8 15,340 44.2
Cork East 12,117 56.6 9,295 43.4
Cork North 12,754 54.2 10,793 45.8
Cork South 11,909 53.5 10,367 46.5
Cork West 10,235 48.5 10,861 51.5
Donegal East 15,521 69.1 6,934 30.9
Donegal West 9,616 62.8 5,700 37.2
Dublin County 19,449 52.9 17,292 47.1
Dublin North-East 6,133 47.9 6,682 52.1
Dublin North-Central 16,417 48.5 17,446 51.5
Dublin North-West 7,707 46.3 8,941 53.7
Dublin South-Central 11,819 49.6 12,010 50.4
Dublin South-East 10,363 50.8 10,034 49.2
Dublin South-West 16,195 51.0 15,551 49.0
Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown 16,911 53.0 14,982 47.0
Galway North 9,037 62.7 5,368 37.3
Galway South 11,710 66.6 5,868 33.4
Galway West 10,134 69.0 4,548 31.0
Kerry North 12,361 61.7 7,680 38.3
Kerry South 7,472 57.7 5,481 42.3
Kildare 10,794 52.4 9,791 47.6
Laois–Offaly 20,059 58.8 14,045 41.2
Limerick East 15,942 59.2 11,007 40.8
Limerick West 12,918 62.4 7,799 37.6
Longford–Westmeath 16,234 48.1 17,534 51.9
Louth 13,646 55.2 11,076 44.8
Mayo North 9,219 62.0 5,651 38.0
Mayo South 12,925 55.1 10,538 44.9
Meath 13,940 58.9 9,710 41.1
Monaghan 11,028 60.0 7,361 40.0
Roscommon 12,188 53.5 10,599 46.5
Sligo–Leitrim 16,081 52.7 14,449 47.3
Tipperary North 12,253 60.2 8,104 39.8
Tipperary South 16,568 58.2 11,900 41.8
Waterford 15,679 61.7 9,715 38.3
Wexford 17,290 55.9 13,667 44.1
Wicklow 10,959 57.9 7,957 42.1
Total 538,003 56.3 417,536 43.7

References

  1. "Presidential election on June 17th". The Irish Times. 28 April 1959.
  2. "Papers presented". The Irish Times. 16 May 1959.
  3. "MacEoin nomination goes in today". The Irish Times. 15 May 1959.
  4. Madden, Jim. Fr John Fahy: Radical Republican & Agrarian Activist.
  5. Alan Kinsella (4 November 2020). "Lia Fáil -Episode 22" (Podcast).
  6. Madden, Jim (31 January 2013). "An Irishman's Diary". Irish Times. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  7. "Council to nominate MacCartan". The Irish Times. 12 May 1959.
  8. "Only two to stand for Presidency". The Irish Times. 20 May 1959.
  9. "No Cork candidate for president". The Irish Times. 13 May 1959.
  10. "Presidential Elections 1938–2011" (PDF). Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. p. 24. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 December 2017. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
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