Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from AldousDuke (see all)

AldousDuke has commented 36 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Council Results
   on 9 May 2011 at 7:24 pm

   Omagh District Council remains the same party wise. 21/21 elected: 10 SF, 3 DUP, 3 SDLP, 3 UUP and 2 indps.

   Only change, two new SF candidates ousting 2 sitting party colleagues in Mid Tyrone and Omagh Town.

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2. Comment on #AE11 Open Thread: West Tyrone (#wt11)
   on 4 April 2011 at 12:30 pm

   By all accounts this should have been a breeze for the SDLP. Finally waking up to their political reality in West Tyrone and running only 1 candidate, Joe Byrne should have taken a seat comfortably.
   McMenamin and McGowan’s 1-2 agreement has thwarted that. McMenamin (Strabane DC) and McGowan (Omagh DC) are evenly distributed to pick up plenty of transfers from one another. The split means Sinn Fein realistically have a chance of 4 seats.

   Similar for the UUP’s single candidate Ross Hussey, there should in theory be enough of a UUP quota across the constituency. But Hussey’s seat would have to come at Bresland’s expense. As has been mentioned Bresland has a strong base in Strabane DC, while Ross is Omagh centric. It will be close I think. Buchanan should retain his seat.

   Alliance fielding their first WT candidate since 2003 is neither good news for SDLP or UUP. On the other hand with so many moderates, there will be plenty of transfers flying around.

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3. Comment on FST redux – the defeated
   on 13 May 2010 at 10:50 am

   These are all rumours. As far as I know ‘disputed’ papers arose from the 2nd recount.
   At the 3rd recount 11 new papers were used. 4 went to Gildernew, 2 to Connor and the rest to the other candidates.

   Talk of ‘disappeared’ papers doesn’t take when you look at the count figures:
   Connor – 21,296 Gildernew – 21,288 (1st count) RC +8

   Connor – 21,295 Gildernew – 21,305 (1st recount) MG +10

   Connor – 21,298 Gildernew – 21,300 (2nd recount) MG +2

   Connor – 21,300 Gildernew – 21,304 (3rd recount) MG +4

   Connor’s vote only ever went down, by 1 on the 1st recount. 1 vote difference is feasbile in a count of over 47,000 papers. Added the fact his vote increased in the two remaining recounts hardly justifies conspiracy theories. Just pure sour grapes IMO.

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4. Comment on FST redux – the defeated
   on 12 May 2010 at 11:16 pm

   Some would argue the SF campaign strategy of not going head to head with Connor meant som 10% unionists didn’t get fired up enough to come out.

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5. Comment on SDLP performance between May 2005 and May 2010
   on 11 May 2010 at 1:53 pm

   Tactical in North Belfast and South Down maybe, but the SDLP ran a poor campaign and it showed.

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6. Comment on West Tyrone – the Deeny factor
   on 11 May 2010 at 12:29 pm

   Where do the tallys prove Doherty lost ‘hardline’ support in those areas? I’d like to see them out of interest.

   Sinn Fein picked up an extra 1,140 votes in 2010 in West Tyrone. That means if they lost some traditional voters, they still attracted a couple of thousand new voters to the party.

   I would argue these are mostly new voters, as SDLP’s poor campaign would have attracted few first timers. If anything, the ‘middle of the road’ voters didn’t some out.

   By the way… Pomeroy is in Mid Ulster.

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7. Comment on SDLP performance between May 2005 and May 2010
   on 11 May 2010 at 12:13 pm

   FST, West Tyrone and South Belfast’s data can’t really be relied on for any kind of accurate representation.

   Although the rest show a slight decline, which have either not come out in 2010 or SF have picked up in places.

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8. Comment on West Tyrone – the Deeny factor
   on 11 May 2010 at 11:28 am

   I think the fact that in 2001 and 2005, local government elections were held alongside the general election should not be ignored.

   Also part of the ‘normalisation’ of politics is the increase in voter apathy.

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9. Comment on West Tyrone – the Deeny factor
   on 11 May 2010 at 10:38 am

   Equation for you all:

   Subtract the number of gains by parties in WT 2010 (6070) from the Deeny vote in 2005 (11905) = 5835
   Add to this the drop in DUP vote (377)
   Equals 6212

   What is the drop in West Tyrone vote since the last general election:
   2005 turnout (43487) – 2010 turnout (37275) = 6212

   Answer?

   Don’t ruin it by talk of 1st time voters….

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10. Comment on West Tyrone – the Deeny factor
    on 10 May 2010 at 9:17 pm

    Was actually thinking about this yesterday myself.

    Think it’s better to look it in terms of actual votes cast. The Deeny vote was always going to go everywhere. So when you look at the votes picked up from the parties (apart from DUP who lost 377), you get:

    Sinn Fein: + 1140
    UUP/UCUNF: + 2300
    SDLP: + 1264
    Plus the two new candidates:
    AP: + 859
    C McClean: + 508

    That totals: 6071.

    Deeny’s vote in 2005 however was 11,905, around a difference of 5,800. That is assuming of course that all the gains were from previous voters. Once you take in the ‘first time voter factor’ which Sinn Fein took plenty of, plus the fact that DUP lost 377, which you could speculate went to UCUNF. That leaves potentially a figure over 6,000 and even closer to 7,000 that didn’t come out this time.

    What we could deduce then is that a lot of the cross-community vote that Deeny galvanized for the hospital campaign didn’t come out this time, possibly in the region of 6-7,000. Which may also include a number of disgruntled former SF voters.
    Interesting when you consider the drop in turnout in West Tyrone was around 6,000.

    (I haven’t included spoiled votes in the data)
    Apologies for errors. Please correct where appropriate.

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