Some of you, who care about these things (and have been doing shift patterns voting for your favourite), will be relieved that we are going to put our Greatest Ulster/Irish man/woman poll to bed at the end of play tomorrow.At the moment the same man heads both categories: John Hume. There’s little chance he’ll get caught in either category. As Fionnuala Meredith points out, there is no women in the Northern category, although Countess Markievicz is currently only five votes adrift of Charles Stuart Parnell in second place in the all Irish category.
I suspose if his supporters gave it a good rattle, Henry Joy might just catch John Hume. But the Nobel Peace Prize winner has had strong support and its unlikely he can be touched at this late stage. We hear that the word ‘blog’ has recently crept into John’s vocabulary, so maybe he looks in on us once in a while!!
So let me be clear: there is no rule against voting for yourself!
Positions to date:
Who is the greatest Ulster man or woman?
John Hume 31% 599
Henry Joy McCracken 26% 509
Seamus Heaney 11% 208
George Best 8% 166
Harry Ferguson 7% 145
Peter Canavan 7% 129
Daniel O’Donnell 5% 96
Pat Jennings 3% 54
Alex Higgins 1% 25
Louis McNeice 1% 22
Votes total 1,953
Who is the greatest Irish man or woman?
John Hume 26% 385
Charles Stewart Parnell 15% 230
Countess Markievicz 15% 225
Oscar Wilde 9% 141
James Joyce 9% 139
TK Whittaker 8% 113
St Columba (Colmcille) 6% 89
Daniel O’Donnell 6% 86
Bono 3% 51
Mary Peters 3% 42
Votes total 1,501
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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