{"id":39842,"date":"2025-10-24T11:49:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/catherine-connolly-and-heather-humphreys-vote-as-polls-open\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:49:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:49:02","slug":"catherine-connolly-and-heather-humphreys-vote-as-polls-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/catherine-connolly-and-heather-humphreys-vote-as-polls-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys vote as polls open"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"EPAEPA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

President Michael D Higgins voted this morning<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Voters in the Republic of Ireland are heading to the polls to elect a new president of Ireland.<\/p>\n

The winning candidate will become the country’s 10th president, replacing the current head of state Michael D Higgins.<\/p>\n

There are two contenders to become the next president, but voters will have a choice of three candidates – Catherine Connolly, Heather Humphreys and Jim Gavin, whose withdrawal from the race came too late to have his name removed from the ballot paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Polls opened on Friday at 07:00 local time and will close at 22:00. According to An Coimisi\u00fan Toghch\u00e1in, Ireland’s independent electoral commission, about 3.6m Irish citizens are entitled to vote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Who are the candidates?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"PAPA Media<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Fine Gael is represented by a former government minister, Heather Humphreys<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Catherine Connolly is running as an independent candidate with the support of a broad base of left-leaning parties and politicians, including the main opposition party Sinn F\u00e9in.<\/p>\n

The coalition government party, Fine Gael, is represented by a former government minister, Heather Humphreys, who comes from a Protestant community in the border county of Monaghan.<\/p>\n

A third candidate, Jim Gavin, who was selected by the main coalition party, Fianna F\u00e1il, withdrew from the campaign earlier in October after intense controversy over a 16-year-old rental dispute<\/a> in which he owed \u20ac3,300 (\u00a32,870) to a former tenant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"PAPA Media<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Catherine Connolly is running as an independent candidate<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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However, as his withdrawal came after the close of nominations, the law states his name must remain on the ballot paper.<\/p>\n

It means people can still vote for Gavin and any votes cast for him will be counted as legitimate and, if necessary, transferred to other candidates after the first count.<\/p>\n

The counting of votes will begin at 09:00 on Saturday, and the winning candidate is expected to be announced at Dublin Castle.<\/p>\n

Michael D Higgins is due to complete the second of his two consecutive seven-year terms of office at midnight on 10 November and the new president is expected to be inaugurated the following day, 11 November.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPA President Michael D Higgins voted this morning Voters in the Republic of Ireland are heading to the polls to elect a new president of Ireland. The winning candidate will become the country’s 10th president, replacing the current head of state Michael D Higgins. There are two contenders to become the next president, but voters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39844,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39842\/revisions\/39844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}