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| Turnout | 58.3% ( 4.7pp)[a] | ||||||||||||||||
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The1959 Irish presidential election was held on Wednesday,17 June 1959.Éamon de Valera, thenTaoiseach, was elected aspresident of Ireland. Areferendum proposed by de Valera to replace the electoral system ofproportional representation by means of thesingle transferable vote withfirst-past-the-post voting which was held on the same day was defeated by 48.2% to 51.8%.
Under Article 12 of theConstitution of Ireland, a candidate for president may be nominated by:
Outgoing presidentSeán T. O'Kelly had served two terms and was ineligible to serve again. On 27 April, theMinister for Local Government signed the ministerial order opening nominations, with noon on 19 May as the deadline for nominations, and 17 June set as the date for a contest.[1] AllIrish citizens on the Dáilelectoral register were eligible to vote.
Éamon de Valera, who had served asPresident of Dáil Éireann and President of the Irish Republic from 1919 to 1922 during theIrish revolutionary period, asPresident of the Executive Council from 1932 to 1937, and as Taoiseach from 1937 to 1948, from 1951 to 1954, and was serving again from 1957, was nominated byFianna Fáil on 12 May.[2] He had served asFianna Fáil's leader since its foundation in 1926. Later reports revealed that de Valera requestedOscar Traynor, theMinister for Justice, to issue him with a certificate of citizenship, as he had been born in theUnited States. This was kept confidential.[3]
Seán Mac Eoin, aFine GaelTD who had been the party's candidate in the1945 presidential election, was nominated again by the party on 15 May.[4]
During the campaign, the far-right micro-partyLia Fáil called on its followers to supportSeán Mac Eoin over de Valera. The party gave 25 reasons for this position, with some of those reasons being that de Valera "was an alien" (de Valera had been born in the United States, but had been raised and living in Ireland since the age of 2), was a puppet of the British, that he was "the darling" of Protestants, Freemasons and the British Army, and that "his satanic lust for power motivates every act of his life". The paper's reasons for supporting Mac Eoin were because he was "an honest-to-God Irishman of our flesh and blood whose father and mother we know" and his military background.[5][6][7]
Patrick McCartan, who had also been a candidate in the 1945 election and had served as a senator forClann na Poblachta from 1948 to 1951, was nominated by two county councils only, short of the four required for nomination.[8][9] Eoin O'Mahony also sought and failed to secure a nomination by county councils.[10]
Éamon de Valera was inaugurated as president on 25 June.
| Candidate | Nominated by | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Éamon de Valera | Oireachtas:Fianna Fáil | 538,003 | 56.30 | |
| Seán Mac Eoin | Oireachtas:Fine Gael | 417,536 | 43.70 | |
| Total | 955,539 | 100.00 | ||
| Valid votes | 955,539 | 97.54 | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 24,089 | 2.46 | ||
| Total votes | 979,628 | 100.00 | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 1,678,450 | 58.37 | ||
| Source:[11] | ||||
| Constituency | De Valera | Mac Eoin | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |
| Carlow–Kilkenny | 20,023 | 58.0 | 14,521 | 42.0 |
| Cavan | 13,912 | 56.6 | 10,669 | 43.4 |
| Clare | 19,095 | 65.0 | 10,270 | 35.0 |
| Cork Borough | 19,390 | 55.8 | 15,340 | 44.2 |
| Cork East | 12,117 | 56.6 | 9,295 | 43.4 |
| Cork North | 12,754 | 54.2 | 10,793 | 45.8 |
| Cork South | 11,909 | 53.5 | 10,367 | 46.5 |
| Cork West | 10,235 | 48.5 | 10,861 | 51.5 |
| Donegal East | 15,521 | 69.1 | 6,934 | 30.9 |
| Donegal West | 9,616 | 62.8 | 5,700 | 37.2 |
| Dublin County | 19,449 | 52.9 | 17,292 | 47.1 |
| Dublin North-East | 6,133 | 47.9 | 6,682 | 52.1 |
| Dublin North-Central | 16,417 | 48.5 | 17,446 | 51.5 |
| Dublin North-West | 7,707 | 46.3 | 8,941 | 53.7 |
| Dublin South-Central | 11,819 | 49.6 | 12,010 | 50.4 |
| Dublin South-East | 10,363 | 50.8 | 10,034 | 49.2 |
| Dublin South-West | 16,195 | 51.0 | 15,551 | 49.0 |
| Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown | 16,911 | 53.0 | 14,982 | 47.0 |
| Galway North | 9,037 | 62.7 | 5,368 | 37.3 |
| Galway South | 11,710 | 66.6 | 5,868 | 33.4 |
| Galway West | 10,134 | 69.0 | 4,548 | 31.0 |
| Kerry North | 12,361 | 61.7 | 7,680 | 38.3 |
| Kerry South | 7,472 | 57.7 | 5,481 | 42.3 |
| Kildare | 10,794 | 52.4 | 9,791 | 47.6 |
| Laois–Offaly | 20,059 | 58.8 | 14,045 | 41.2 |
| Limerick East | 15,942 | 59.2 | 11,007 | 40.8 |
| Limerick West | 12,918 | 62.4 | 7,799 | 37.6 |
| Longford–Westmeath | 16,234 | 48.1 | 17,534 | 51.9 |
| Louth | 13,646 | 55.2 | 11,076 | 44.8 |
| Mayo North | 9,219 | 62.0 | 5,651 | 38.0 |
| Mayo South | 12,925 | 55.1 | 10,538 | 44.9 |
| Meath | 13,940 | 58.9 | 9,710 | 41.1 |
| Monaghan | 11,028 | 60.0 | 7,361 | 40.0 |
| Roscommon | 12,188 | 53.5 | 10,599 | 46.5 |
| Sligo–Leitrim | 16,081 | 52.7 | 14,449 | 47.3 |
| Tipperary North | 12,253 | 60.2 | 8,104 | 39.8 |
| Tipperary South | 16,568 | 58.2 | 11,900 | 41.8 |
| Waterford | 15,679 | 61.7 | 9,715 | 38.3 |
| Wexford | 17,290 | 55.9 | 13,667 | 44.1 |
| Wicklow | 10,959 | 57.9 | 7,957 | 42.1 |
| Total | 538,003 | 56.3 | 417,536 | 43.7 |
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