Election battlegrounds #LE19 : Castlereagh South

This 7 seater has an interesting mix with Sinn Féin on verge of a breakthrough, 2 former Alliance candidates running on Independent and DUP tickets and Alliance keen to get their 2 seats back and the SDLP to hold their two.

In 2014 Alliance, DUP and the SDLP all had around 1.8 quotas. the UUP 0.88 quotas.

As Chris has already alluded to this was one of the Alliance Party’s best performing DEAs in 2014 but will be one of its most challenging in 2019.

In early 2017 the 2 Alliance councillors here Geraldine Rice and Vasundhara Kamble resigned from the party. Councillor Kamble joined the DUP later that same year. Rice has remained an independent but both councillors have signed each other’s nomination papers.

Geraldine Rice has been a councillor here for the past 30 years so can in no way be written off. The impact she has on the Alliance vote could well decide whether Alliance take one or two seats and may even provide an opening for the SDLP to hold their 2 seats in the event of a Sinn Féin gain.

Alliance are running Sorcha Eastwood and Michelle Guy. Eastwood is one of the party’s most high profile candidates and helped organise an anti-Brexit rally in Belfast late last year.

NI21 took 359 votes here in 2014 so Alliance will be hopeful that they could gain a lot of those voters back again.

The Greens are the newcomers here this time around and their candidate Simon Lee will be seeking to put a respectable few hundred votes on the scoreboard.

The SDLP are running sitting councillor John Gallen and Rachael McCarthy a constituency officer for Claire Hanna the local South Belfast MLA.

In 2014 Sinn Féin got 0.8 quota in first preferences and their candidate Nuala Toman just missed out to the SDLP’s second runner. They are very confident of a breakthrough here through Ryan Carlin and he should hit quota on the first count.

There was about 3.2 unionist quotas here in 2014 and this should see Michael Henderson returned for the UUP and two of the DUP’s lineup of Nathan Anderson, Jason Elliott and Vasundhara Kamble.

Nicola Girvin is the TUV candidate and even though the party picked up half a quota here in 2014 the other unionist candidates should be comfortably ahead on the first count.

The first six seats should return 1 Alliance, 2 DUP, 1 SDLP 1 UUP and 1 Sinn Féin. The last seat will be a toss-up between Rice, the second Alliance and the second SDLP. Rice might poll strongly on the first count but this is a tough one to read.

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