Congratulations to Michael D Higgins, who won this AV election against six rivals. With 39.6% of the 1st preference votes compared with 28.5% for Sean Gallagher, the runner-up, he would probably have won if the election had been by first past the post. However, that would have been unsatisfactory. We would not have known how the other 31.9% would have voted once it became clear that their preferred candidates could not win. Under the UK’s first past the post system, he would have won despite 60.4% of voters having voted against him. This would not have been a real mandate.

As it is, the election was held by the Alternative Vote (AV) system, which is so much more democratic than first past the post. As no candidate had at least half the votes in the first stage of counting, the losing candidates were eliminated and their votes were transferred as directed by the voters. Still no candidate had half the votes, so the process was repeated until only the leading two candidates remained.

The result of the final stage of counting was:

Higgins 1,007,194 (61.6%)
Gallagher 628,114 (38.4%).

Thus Mr Higgins had a clear overall majority and a real mandate for the presidency.

This proves the value of AV for filling a single vacancy.

I cannot show the full result in tabular form here, but you can see it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_presidential_election,_2011#Result.