Kenny goes the extra miles to extend gap between opponents
They are claimed by parties who have the luxury or confidence to travel out and win over households where they could not ordinarily rely on a vote.
A party’s core base, its geographic and demographic heartland, will only ever get it so far.
In Campaign 2011, Enda Kenny spent more time outside his comfort zone, visited more constituencies and worked to meet a greater number of floating voters.
He did so by driving 4,519km and canvassing every constituency. No seat, whether it was an old bastion or a new prospect, was ignored.
He travelled less than Micheál Martin (5,427km) but hit more places.
And he moved more than Eamon Gilmore (3,835km) but spent almost as much time in the Labour Party stronghold of Dublin.
Karl Rove, the controversial yet successful Republican strategist, won two elections for George W Bush. He started his campaign on the assumption that roughly 45% of American voters were Republican and 45% were Democrat. Presidents were decided by the fringes who could be swayed either way.
So rather than pander to the professional well-got Republican base who would support him regardless, he drummed up policies that courted the social extremists and untraditional minorities. This was the key 10%. Mr Rove fought the war in areas he knew there were votes left to be won.
In the 24 days of this campaign, the various parties directed their leaders’ tours where they felt the associated publicity would have the most impact for candidates.
And for the duration of the campaign only one leader consistently fitted in with the Karl Rove philosophy — that was Enda Kenny.
Throughout the campaign Mr Kenny met more candidates, made more stops and was rewarded with the most even geographic spread of support in the polls and the greatest uplift among undecided voters.
By contrast, Labour limped towards yesterday’s polling booths taking solace from the fact its decline had yet to see it dip below Fianna Fáil.
While Fianna Fáil approached the election hoping against hope that the base it concentrated on throughout was above the crucial 20% threshold.
But while Mr Martin was spending his days trying to secure this foundation and getting them to canvass, his main rival could afford to maraud.
Since February 1, Mr Kenny toured the entire country. Eight days involved constituency events in Dublin, as opposed time spent organising in headquarters. Incredibly, this was just one day less than the Dublin-based Labour Party leader.
Stops in the capital were spread evenly throughout his whole campaign. And all this did not include one day in Berlin meeting German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
There were seven relative down days, when he travelled less than 150km. This was the same as Mr Martin. But five fewer than Mr Gilmore.
Mr Kenny got far more value for his travels than the Fianna Fáil leader.
Mr Martin clocked up 5,427km but did so while reaching the fewest amount of constituencies of the leaders. He missed 13 since February 1.
His journey told two stories.
He drove to remote locations more often, rural voters and farmers retained more residual support for Fianna Fáil than the cities where the Labour Party thrived.
Secondly, he spent no nights on the road and returned home to Cork or Dublin after each day’s travel. His support team said this was because, on top of the leader’s tour, he had to organise a party that started the election trailing badly in terms of preparation.
So he did not use his Dublin days at HQ to travel outside the office and try lift the morale in the city’s constituencies where the party was watching its poll figures collapse.
And although he kicked off his campaign in Dublin South West just five more days involved constituency events in the capital.
There was no out-and-about canvass in Dublin central or a standard tour of the shopping centres on the M50 belt.
Mr Martin said a tactical decision was taken not to spend time in areas where seats were considered safe.
He avoided the constituencies of Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan, Bertie Ahern, Mary Hanafin and Pat Carey. Brian Lenihan’s patch was almost overlooked, Mr Martin visited a rural factory in outlying St Margaret’s rather than any of the main urban population centres in Castleknock or Blanchardstown.
The old Haughey seat was also passed over. And Willie O’Dea’s neighbourhood benefited from just a night-time rally in a hotel.
Instead it was the younger, and more vulnerable, candidates who benefited from his presence for canvassing and public rallies.
The party eyed seats such as Margaret Conlon and Brendan Smith in Cavan Monaghan, Thomas Byrne (Meath West), Timmy Dooley (Clare), Kevin O’Keeffe (Cork East), Sean Connick (Wexford) and Dara Calleary (Mayo).
On a journey back from Mullingar his motorcade swung north to Cavan, a constituency he had already visited, rather than going south to Laois Offaly.
Reflecting on the campaign Mr Martin said he was told by Mr Cowen that the Offaly seats were safe and he would be better served going elsewhere. The same logic was applied to the Tánaiste Ms Coughlan’s county.
“The team at headquarters are targeting constituencies obviously based on our research to ensure we can both retain and secure seats in those particular constituencies,” Mr Martin said.
At many of these events he shied away from public sites or long walkabouts and instead addressed rallies where he sought to re-energise the party’s famous electoral machine.
Eamon Gilmore had a different four weeks. He drove less than anybody — his 3835km was 1592km below Mr Martin. The scope and path of his journey was telling and suggests the party knew ahead of everybody else that its rhetoric of leading the next government was empty.
A clear strategy was evident in the first half of the campaign when Mr Gilmore remained rooted in Dublin, where the party was showing itself to be the most popular.
At the midway point in the campaign he had spent just two days outside the old pale border. And this was to constituencies where the legacies of Labour Party legends, Dick Spring and Jim Kemmy, still loom large.
The debate in TG4 gave him a staging-post to launch a tour around the west. At this point he picked up his itinerary and finished with a flourish so he hit 36 of the 43 constituencies.
Two days in the final seven were spent in Munster and south east Leinster. But there were key locations left out, two Cork constituencies and Carlow Kilkenny.
Donegal was not visited, despite former Fine Gael councillor Jimmy Harte and Frank McBrearty believing they can win a seat each.
The poor showing in the Donegal South West by-election had upset Labour’s ambitions of a realistic 43-constituency election.
Nine days in Dublin represented the Labour Party preaching to the choir, this city was the swell behind the Spring Tide and more than 16 seats in the capital could feed the squall blowing the Gilmore Gale.
Either because of tactics or a delayed realisation that it had to take the fight throughout the country, Mr Gilmore only began a national tour in earnest on February 18.
By this stage Mr Martin had travelled more than 3,500km, a figure close to Mr Gilmore’s 24-day campaign total.
But in the end where ever these two men travelled they were always one step behind Mr Kenny’s blitz of unaligned voters he hoped could be swayed.
The Fine Gael leader today looks set to reap the reward for the journey he travelled.
* THAT’S why it is so important that the Irish people give us a mandate. It’s either “Frankfurt’s way or Labour’s way”— Eamon Gilmore
* Mr Trichet is a European civil servant. He’s a very important European civil servant and any civil servant will of course always stick to the plan that is there at the moment, just as he will stick to the plan that is renegotiated when it is renegotiated — Eamon Gilmore
* What this is about is whether or not people are going to have opportunities for employment; or whether families in this country are going to be screwed by austerity measures that Fine Gael intends to introduce through their stealth taxes — Eamon Gilmore
* It was the biggest bank robbery in the history of this country and it was the banks that robbed the people — Eamon Gilmore
* Any bank coming to us looking for more money is going to have to show how they are going to impose losses on their junior bondholders, on their senior bondholders, and on other creditors before they come looking to us for any more money. Not another cent — Leo Varadkar
* Leo Varadkar is beginning to sound like the Maggie Thatcher of Irish politics. What he wants to do is take money out of the pockets of families in this country that are struggling to survive — Róisín Shorthall
* I’m disappointed to see where Labour have drifted here, and I’m not sure whether that smacks of panic or desperation, but I just want to say that I have no interest in misleading advertisements — Enda Kenny
* I know what you’re going to say again: “Fourteen years, I’ve a five-point plan, let’s get Ireland working”, and you put your fist up in the air. We need a bit more than that now, Enda, in terms of the future of this country — Micheál Martin
* The first thing Sinn Féin would do, I repeat this again, is get rid of this awful Universal Social Charge, it is an act of gross terrorism and I use that term advisedly — Gerry Adams
* Now Gerry, I’ll tell you you’re a bit of the magician if you can pull that. You would be a great host of Late Late Show as every Friday because there would be something for everyone in the audience — Micheál Martin
* I have to say that in whatever strongest way possible that I can articulate it that I had nothing to do with the abduction and killing of that unfortunate woman [Jean McConville] — Gerry Adams
* You’re full of wind and spoof about a lot of things — Enda Kenny to Micheál Martin
* The Chinese are very strategic and whenever I met Chinese ministers or officials, particularly as enterprise minister, there was one, sort of, overriding refrain from them or demand. They kept on saying to me: “You Irish, very good at software” — Micheál Martin mimicking a Chinese accent
* I haven’t had a biscuit in over 20 years but I do have a sweet tooth for homemade baking. I love apple and rhubarb tarts like my mother used to make and also homemade chocolate cake — Micheál Martin
* I am not contemplating any incineration or otherwise of the Green Party. We are going to fight this election all the way, each of us in our own constituencies — John Gormley
* Micheál Martin might have wandered down Grafton Street to see if he could meet a couple of good-looking women for the photograph — Pat Rabbitte
* I’m not somebody who’s really a natural canvasser. I probably shouldn’t be in politics at all. I’m not really a people’s person at all — Leo Varadkar
* Our five-point plan is like a five-pointed star. The one on our logo. It gives clarity, light and direction to what will be a difficult journey to a better future ahead — Enda Kenny’s first, of many, references to Fine Gael’s five-point plan.
* “Remember when Ray D’Arcy said he’d leave Ireland if Enda became Taoiseach?...” — @navanman
* “What we need to do is rise up and say what we feel.” — @niallerc
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