25/05/2007

Ahern’s party leading Irish elections

Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fail party was the first party to win a seat in the Irish General Election.

John Curran was elected in the Dublin Mid West constituency as the party looks set to return to government.

Mr Ahern has led the coalition government since 1997 and the opposition’s Alliance for Change hopes to end the decade of Fianna Fail rule and is hoping to win a third term.

Exit poll results so far suggest the coalition led by his Fianna Fail party has 44.2% of the vote, against 36.2% for the opposition Fine Gael’s centre-left alliance.

Mr Ahern’s junior coalition partner the Progressive Democrats are down a few percentage points from 2002 at 2.6%. Fine Gael is holding 26.3% of the vote while its Labour Party alliance partner has 9.9%.

Sinn Fein has 7.3% and the Greens have 4.8%.

It is understood the counting will take several days.

(JM/SP)

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