Terry Prone: Nothing quite like the silent calm of career extinction for election losers
With almost 700 candidates running in 43 constituencies there was always going to be more losers than winners in the general election
Originally published in the Irish Examiner.
Two different emotional worlds. One occupied by us media folk, rushing between radio and TV studios, making judgments, arguing statistics, explaining seat losses and gains, high as the proverbial kite on adrenalin and self-importance.
The other occupied by the politicians in their local count centres, some of them still not elected as we enter this new week.
Watching the long paper scarves of voters’ intentions being sorted and re-sorted while they hope their pile gets a bit higher than the pile of another candidate’s votes, their insides crimped by the need to pretend optimism.
In an even worse section of that emotional world are the politicians who have lost. Either lost their existing seat or lost their chances of occupying a Dáil seat or their hard-won high office.
The uncertainty may be the worst thing. Worse even than the sentence of expulsion.
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