By-elections are a little like the Eurovision- the count is where the craic is. After a campaign that saw heavy spending – almost €280,000 – but little fire, the low turnout showed a large degree of voter apathy.

The good news for the Government is that the Dáil’s maths are unchanged.

Fine Gael lost the seat Paschal Donohoe held in Dublin central for 14 years, but gained Catherine Connolly’s seat in Galway west.

That is not an unimportant aspect of the result; the Government has a decent working majority, but a further two-seat swing against them, coming so soon after the Healy-Rae brothers defection to the opposition ranks, would have applied some pressure.

A further fillip is that it’s extremely rare for a Government candidate to win a by-election.

The big losers were Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. Fianna Fáil, the largest party in the Dáil and across county councils, performed abjectly in both constituencies. They might console themselves over the fact that, a bit like the Kerry football supporters, their supporters are reputed to only show up for the big day, and one when they look like winning. Friday’s votes were neither.

However, in a constituency where they frequently held three of five seats, it’s a poor outcome.

For Independent Ireland, there was optimism that the significant public support for the fuel protest might translate into a seat for Noel Thomas in Galway west. They backed the protests more publicly more than any other party with representation in the Dáil. In the end, they fell short, with Thomas failing to attract transfers from the array of left-of-centre candidates in the field.

Seán Kyne gained 4,249 of Helen Ogbu of Labour’s vote, compared to Noel Thomas’ 1,283. It meant that 70% of the voters who preferred the Labour Party candidate to either Fine Gael’s Kyne or Independent Ireland’s Thomas then opted to transfer their vote to Kyne rather than Thomas.

Considering it was the tenth count, a high proportion of votes were still active – over 40% of Ogbu’s accumulated vote transferred through. That shows people voted right down the ballot; they displayed a clear choice as to who they wanted to be elected, but also who they didn’t want to be elected.

A by-election is a stand-alone ballot, and it would be wrong to read too much into the outcome of either.

However, Independent Ireland has to be concerned that people who gave opposition party candidates their first preference then transferred across the Dáil chamber to support someone from a party that has been in government since 2011. Its strong stance on rural/farming issues have given them a base, a platform to build on. But is their stance on issues like immigration making them transfer toxic?

The reverse dynamic is affecting both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin – Friday’s vote saw more strongly branded parties ideologically faring better. Fianna Fáil dominated politics in Ireland for a century with a broad-based populist platform, Sinn Féin seemed poised to appropriate some of that ground from the left flank.