Catherine Connolly will be the tenth Uachtarán na hÉireann

The independent Galway-West TD looks to be the clear winner of the 2025 Presidential election as the votes are counted on Saturday, October 25.

Fine Gael’s Heather Humphries conceded the election at 2pm, saying Catherine Connolly would be “a president for all”, while Fianna Fail’s Jim Gavin had already withdrawn from the race weeks before.

Ms Connolly was elected with over 60% of the valid poll, with a 45% turnout of the electorate.

Despite withdrawing from the race on October 5 due to a controversy over money owed to a former tenant, Jim Gavin was still a valid candidate on the ballot sheet, garnering just over 7% of the vote.

This means he falls short of the 12.5% of the vote needed for candidates to get their election expenses repaid, a further blow for Fianna Fail.

Early tallies were already indicating a decisive victory for Connolly, with many ballot boxes holding more spoiled votes than valid votes for Gavin and Humphries combined.

The ‘Spoil the Vote’ campaign appears to have garnered major support, with never-before seen numbers of spoiled ballots being counted in this election and a total of 13% of votes cast being marked as spoiled.

Just over 19% of the total ballots cast in the Dublin South Central constituency were marked spoiled, while 20.2% of ballots in Dublin Mid-West and 14.5% (or 7537) ballots in Dublin South-West were also deemed spoiled.

There are reports that many boxes in Tallaght returned extremely high numbers of spoiled votes, with at least two boxes from Jobstown returning over 50% spoiled ballots.

Many had messages criticising all three candidates, calling them “traitors” or “jokers” or adding Maria Steen as a candidate.

Others were scribbled with anti-immigrant slogans or messages referencing the recent unrest at Citywest, such as “she was only 10”.

Catherine Connolly’s seven-year term as Uachtarán na hÉireann will begin on November 11, 2025.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme