Most Favourite Irish Folk Singers

These are the most popular Irish folk singers of all time as voted by members of the public. The voting took place between the 9th and 17th of December 2013. There are about 80 Irish folk singers who made a name for themselves by singing and writing folk songs in the last 50 years or so. I made a list of these singers just to remind the voters of them, but it was left completely up to the voter who they wanted to  see become the most popular Irish folk singer in living memory. Members of the public could vote for anybody, including themselves. Although I made it clear that this vote was only for ''Irish'' singers, I got several entries for international singers. If an entry had international singers along with some Irish one's I gave points to their Irish entry.
I calculated the points something like the way the Eurovision song contest is done, by awarding their first choice with 5 points, their second with 4 points and so on. So the singer awarded the most points became the most popular / favourite Irish folk singer.
The contest was advertised on Google + , on Facebook and also here on this site

Luke Kelly

Ronnie Drew

Paddy Reilly

Tommy Makem

First place Luke Kelly
Points 1645
Second place Christy Moore
Points 1140
Third place Liam Clancy
Points 870
Forth place Ronnie Drew
Points 695
Fifth place Finbar Furey
Points 345
Sixth place Mary Black
Points 315
Seventh place Paddy Reilly
Points 290
Eight place Tommy Byrne
Points 275
Ninth place Shane MacGowan
Points 260
10th Place Tommy Makem
Points 195

Christy Moore

Finbar Furey

Tommy Byrne

There are already other websites that give the top 100 folk singers of all time but this is just for the Irish singers. On the other sites the top singers were made up from record sales and the influence the particular singer had regarding getting others to follow in their footsteps. Also on the other sites the general public had no input deciding the outcome of the top folkies of all time. So this was your chance to have tour say.

Liam Clancy

Mary Black

Shane MacGowan

Comment-
I wasn't a bit surprised with the choice of the first 3 choices as Luke Kelly, Christy and Liam are held in very high regard by folk fans, and it was mainly folk fans and musicians who done the voting. I was surprised by the lack of women who took the time to take part, of all the voters, women made up only about 5% of the total. I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who took part in the vote, although this site is one of the most popular music sites in Ireland and gets on average 16,000 hits a day I was still surprised by the amount of people who took the time to say who's their favourite folk singer from Ireland of all time. I thank you one and all.