Now it’s early days (and it’s unwise to project too early) but it does look like between the weather and the rage at Arlene, the turnout is up in East Antrim and East Belfast at some polling stations…
This for instance, if we apply the artificial rule that you multiply the 12-noon figure by four to these boxes:
Noon Woodburn Primary E Antrim
Box 55 1080, 146 issued
box 56 973, 146 issued
box 57 953, 126 issued
@RBlackBT @SluggerOToole @mickfealty— Danielle Roberts (@DaniRNI) March 2, 2017
In every case, it looks like an increased turnout with Box 55 looking like 54%, Box 56, 60%, and Box 57, 53%. Now we don’t know the implications of this because we don’t have the detailed tallies of each box from last year. But increased turnout is exactly what the DUP not want.
But contrast, Sinn Fein are leaving nothing to chance in West Belfast…
@mickfealty teams of shinners all over the place.On foot in cars with loud speakers, hanging about outside polling stations! everywhere!
— Katie-o (@kateyo) March 2, 2017
Please us this thread as an info dump for us and others to share and analyse. We’re particularly keen to hear from you further afield from Greater Belfast in places like North Antrim and Strangford which will give us a hint of how uniform the patterns are.
The easiest thing is to take a picture of the turnout figures at 5pm, then we double that one and it will give us an idea.
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