Connolly edges Humphreys in every qualifying county on the radio

Catherine Connolly leads Heather Humphreys in every qualifying county head-to-head on local radio, with the tightest margins in Dublin (+6.3 pp) and Limerick (+5.9 pp) according to PR intelligence platform Everhaze which released its latest report in its ‘Battle of the Airwaves’ series.

The report which tracked 4,021 radio mentions of the candidates from 25th September 2025 to 10th of October 2025 shows that In overall volume, despite dropping out of the campaign, Jim Gavin remains the dominant voice on air, capturing 50.1% of all radio mentions (2,013 of 4,021) across 60 stations and show.

In other key findings the latest Everhaze Battle of the Airwaves report found that:

Share of Voice consisted of Gavin 50.1%; Connolly 27.3%; Humphreys 22.6%,

A County head-to-head (local-only) found that Connolly leads Humphreys in all qualifying counties with Dublin and Limerick the closest contests.

The most talked about trend so far in the campaign are discussions about Fianna Fáil Leadership which has dominated the narrative in this window (875 mentions, 21% of all campaign mentions, with net sentiment ?68.7 pp).

Speaking about the findings, James McCann, CEO of Everhaze said:

“At the midway point, the airwaves have been dominated by the fallout from Jim Gavin’s campaign. Tis withdrawal set the agenda and kept volume elevated. But when you strip that noise out and look at the head-to-heads, the race is tighter than the topline suggests, with Catherine Connolly leading Humphreys across every qualifying county. As we enter the final two weeks, the battleground is clear: national shows will steady the candidates narrative, but local talk will decide perception.”

Everhaze is an Irish-built PR intelligence platform that tracks real-time media coverage across radio, print, and online sources in Ireland and the UK. Its technology combines broadcast capture with AI-driven analysis to map who is getting talked about, where, and in what tone. The platform is widely used by communicators to monitor campaigns, understand sentiment shifts, and measure share of voice.

As part of the 2025 Presidential campaign, Everhaze has launched the “Battle of the Airwaves” tracker, a live view of how each candidate (Heather Humphreys, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin) is performing week-by-week on radio.

The tracker highlights:

Share of voice across national vs local stations

County-by-county exposure showing where candidates are winning or lagging

Sentiment balance, capturing whether coverage is favourable, critical, or neutral

Programme battlegrounds, where margins between rivals are razor-thin

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