Niall Kelly 
The big winner of the European Election was the Alliance’s Naomi Long who managed to increase her party’s share of the vote by from 7.1% five years ago to 18.5%, winning a seat from the Ulster Unionists. For the other parties it was a mixed bag: Sinn Féin only took the third seat having taken the first seat in the previous two elections; the SDLP thought they could win back the seat they lost in 2004 but didn’t even come …
Aontú have so far secured four council seats (albeit temporarily and not concurrently) in the North since they were founded in January 2019: two people from the SDLP gene pool and two from the Sinn Féin gene pool. Before the local government election, sitting councillors Fergal Lennon (Sinn Féin – Craigavon) and Rosemarie Shields (SDLP – Mid Tyrone) left their parties and joined Aontú. Neither of these two candidates were successful in that election and the sole elected Aontú councillor …
Cllr. Denise Mullen’s recent decision to leave the SDLP and join Aontú, less than three months after she was successfully re-elected to Mid Ulster Council, has provoked a flurry of questions about politicians who are elected for one party but then switch to another. Is the current system fair? Standing on a party ticket and then dropping party so quickly after an election is noticeable. Should the rules be changed? Should people have to put themselves before the electorate again? …
With speculation mounting that we may see a general election either by the end of the year, or early in 2020 now feels like an appropriate time to look at the results of the 2017 Westminster election to remind us of the current state of play. Following a walking holiday in Wales at Easter 2017 Theresa May called a snap general election in order to give herself an increased, working majority in the Commons so that she could deliver …
Spending by candidates in the 2019 local government election is now available and when we delve into it, comparing candidate and party spend with the number of votes secured, a number of very interesting narratives emerge. The headline figure is that 819 candidates, representing 17 parties (plus 71 independents) spent a total of £650,140 in order to win 462 council seats. (It should be noted that there are only returns for 815 candidates as 4 candidates either did not make …
Recall petitions have been in the news recently, following the decision of voters in Brecon & Radnorshire to recall their (now former) MP, Chris Davies, after he pled guilty to two counts of fraud concerning Parliamentary expenses. .; Recall elections are relatively new in the UK and were introduced in 2015 partly in response to the MPs’ expenses scandal which occurred in the run up to the 2010 general election. MPs can be recalled only under certain circumstances: • If …
One of the great debates, and I use that term loosely, we have had over the past decade in Northern Irish politics is whether the Alliance Party are more nationalist or unionist. Instead of letting Alliance, and the people who vote for them, define what the party stands for, certain elements of the political establishment, in particular political unionism, have gone out of their way to attempt to define Alliance as being somewhere on the spectrum between anti-unionist and pro-republican. …
Figures published by the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland, as a result of a freedom of information request, show that the number of people who voted in the 2019 local government election by postal votes, proxy postal or proxy (herein referred to as absent voting), varied significantly across the north. If you are unable to vote in person on polling day, arrangements can be made for someone else to vote on your behalf (a proxy vote – either in person …
For many people involved in election campaigns, come 10pm on polling day the work is done; the voters have had their say and the result is in the lap of the gods. After a long day of standing outside polling stations, trying to influence every voter entering, comes the even longer day (or days) that is the count. Many candidates don’t know what to do with themselves on the day of the count; famously former Irish Labour leader Ruairi Quinn …
With political polling in Northern Ireland still extremely rare, it is always interesting to see what LucidTalk produce, and with the European election barely a week away many people have been eagerly awaiting the results of their first European election poll. Whilst the headline results are interesting, it is when we delve deeper into their dataset that we can create a model which gives an insight into where the 3 MEP seats could end up. Note on the method: this …
The seats The ballots have been cast, the votes have been counted, the results are in and the spinning has begun. Despite thoughts before the election that both the DUP and Sinn Féin would consolidate their support and increase their seats, the DUP managed to lose 8 seats and Sinn Féin saw no change to their total. The failure of the two big parties to make gains did not, however, translate into victories for the UUP and SDLP, with both …
A discussion has broken out in the South about the erection of election posters in Dalkey, after Dalkey Tidy Towns had declared a no go area for them and warned that any such posters put up in the area would be “removed and destroyed.” This seems to be part of the wider Poster Free campaign which claims to have signed up over 160 “towns/areas” to having no plastic election posters through campaigns run by a number of TidyTowns organisations, but …
The 2014 European and Local Government elections were held on the same day, unlike this time around when the Council election will be held three weeks before the European election. Some might think that the local government election results will be a sure-fire way to predict the results of the European election but there are a number of reasons why this might not be the case. As I have mentioned before, no party is standing in every DEA in the …
Following on from my previous post looking at the runners and riders for the local government election, I’ll now drill down in a bit more detail to look at each council and some of the key races. In a previous post I spoke about how all the parties will be telling us how they want our votes, but in reality no party in the 2014 election stood in every single DEA, meaning that not everyone who wanted to vote for …
Before the local government election notice of election was published on Tuesday 26th March we started to see the familiar sight of election posters appearing on lampposts across Northern Ireland. Love them or loathe them, posters are a mainstay of elections in Northern Ireland and in the Republic in a way that they are not in GB. Parties compete to be the first to get their posters up to ensure they get the best positions; at busy junctions and outside …
The nominations for the 2019 local government election are in and a total of 819 candidates are running for 462 council seats across eleven different council areas – a decrease from the 893 candidates who sought election in 2014. The DUP was the largest party in 2014 and this remains but the total number of candidates they are running has decreased, from 189 to 172. There has been a slight increase in the number of candidates that Sinn Féin are …
With the list of candidates for the 2019 local government election scheduled to be released after 6pm on Monday 8th April, now is a good time to look back at the runners and riders from the last council elections back in 2014. The 2014 election was the first to be fought on the new eleven ‘super council’ basis and saw a total of 974 candidates running for 462 seats, a reduction from the 582 seats prior to 2014. The results …
When the DUP’s Peter Johnston became a member of Mid and East Antrim Council, representing the Carrick Castle DEA, on 19th October 2018 he did so by winning a by-election[1], the first time since May 2010 that a by-election for a council seat had been fought. Figures provided by the Electoral Office show that since the last local government election in May 2014 there have been 86 co-options to councils (including five to the old legacy councils), meaning that 19% …