Nicholas Whyte – Slugger O'Toole

What if we re-run the Boundary Commission for 650 MPs, 18 in Northern Ireland?

Nicholas Whyte on January 5, 2020, 12:10 pm | Readers 6683

Rumours started last week suggesting that the newly re-elected British government now plans to drop the current Boundary Commission proposals to cut the House of Commons to 600 MPs, and to start a new revision process which would keep the number of MPs at 650. It was always going to be a stretch to get 50 MPs to vote for their own abolition, so I am not at all surprised that this is where we will end up. Remember that …

Boundary Commission – the detailed projections

Nicholas Whyte on September 11, 2018, 4:29 pm | Readers 3840

So, the Boundary Commission’s report is finally out, as already discussed by Mick and commentators here. As ever I have done some number-crunching; details below but here are the headlines. At Westminster level, five currently DUP-held seats are squashed into four – East Londonderry is replaced by the new seat of Causeway; most of North Antrim becomes Mid Antrim; South Antrim is split several ways, and the new seat with that name actually has more of the old Lagan Valley …

West Tyrone – the numbers

Nicholas Whyte on January 15, 2018, 8:00 pm | Readers 4162

Who would have thought that Northern Ireland would supply the first by-election of the House of Commons elected in 2017? We haven’t had a lot of parliamentary by-elections of late – this is only the fourth this century, after Martin McGuinness’s resignation from neighbouring Mid Ulster in 2013, Gerry Adams’ resignation from West Belfast in 2011, and Clifford Forsythe’s death in 2000. Indeed, the only other by-election in the last thirty years was in 1995 in North Down, caused by …

The looming ultimatum: Varadkar’s warning shot

Nicholas Whyte on July 29, 2017, 9:22 pm | Readers 4817

Many thanks to Brian Walker for his posts yesterday and today about the latest developments in the Irish angle to the Brexit negotiations. I think one important dimension has been missed, however. Progress on the Irish border is one of the three priority areas of discussion where sufficient progress needs to have been made by October to move to further talks over the future UK/EU relationship. The other two are the terms of the financial settlement for Brexit, and the …

If the 2016 Assembly election had had five seats per constituency…

Nicholas Whyte on December 22, 2016, 8:21 am | Readers 8193

There has been some speculation about a possible early election for the Assembly. While I personally am sceptical – the institutions have a habit of creaking on through – it’s worth noting that all future elections, including an early one if called before 2021, will be for an Assembly with five seats in each of the 18 constituencies rather than six. (The new boundaries for 17 seats, currently being prepared, won’t kick in for some time yet.) To see who …

Northern Ireland Assembly Election: It’s all over #ae16

Nicholas Whyte on May 7, 2016, 6:14 pm | Readers 2378

Pausing between flights in Heathrow on my way home, I have time to type up the overall results. Apologies for the slight messiness below, but I think the details are clear. Democratic Unionist Party 38 seats (no change) 202,567 first prefs 29.2% (-0.8%) Sinn Féin 28 seats (−1) 166,785 first prefs 24.0% (−2.9%) Ulster Unionist Party 16 seats (-) 87,302 first prefs 12.6% (−0.7%) SDLP 12 seats (−2) 83,364 first prefs 12.0% (−2.2%) Alliance Party 8 seats (-) 48,447 first …

Northern Ireland Assembly election – morning update #ae16

Nicholas Whyte on May 7, 2016, 7:42 am | Readers 2681

The first preference votes are now in, and over half the 108 seats have now been allocated. There has been no dramatic shift of support from the parties, and at least 11 of the 18 constituencies will return the same mix of MLAs as they did in 2011. But two themes are emerging for me. First, the vote for all of the established parties is down. Down only slightly, 0.7%-0.8% for the DUP, UUP and Alliance, who will each return …

#ae16 Elections ebook now available

Nicholas Whyte on May 2, 2016, 11:08 am | Readers 991

Hot off the press – why spend ages searching for the Northern Ireland elections website on wifi, when you can download all the most relevant bits to your Kindle, phone or tablet for less than £3? Each constituency chapter contains: A map A description of which local government districts intersect with the constituency Basic demographic information from the 2011 census What happened in the previous Assembly elections in 1998, 2003, 2007 and 2011 What I think might happen this time …

Disability and British policy: a personal reflection

Nicholas Whyte on March 20, 2016, 2:51 pm | Readers 2027

My partner and I moved to Belgium at the start of 1999. We had a little girl, eighteen months old; and another child on the way. By the time her brother arrived that summer, our daughter was burbling away as two-year-olds do, asking for favourite toys, food and videos (DVDs had not yet come in) and delighting in the new arrival in the family. And over the next six months, she lost it. The stream of chatter dried up. She …

The 17 new constituencies?

Nicholas Whyte on March 9, 2016, 6:30 pm | Readers 5104

Northern Ireland's parliamentary map is about to be redrawn again, with the number of seats cut from 18 to 17. This is likely to result in Belfast being reduced from four seats to three, two of which (on recent form) look like decent prospects for Sinn Féin. The former SDLP leader's seat of South Belfast is unlikely to survive, and the new boundaries of the South Antrim seat held by the UUP's Danny Kennedy Kinahan (thanks Kevin and Windowlean) are …

How much of a DUP/SF swing would it take for Martin McGuinness to be First Minister?

Nicholas Whyte on March 6, 2016, 6:30 pm | Readers 3357

In her speech to the DUP party conference today, First Minister Arlene Foster called attention to the narrowness of the margin between her party and Sinn Féin:

A swing of only two votes in every hundred from the DUP to Féin would see Martin McGuinness become the next First Minister.

In the last Assembly election in 2011, the DUP won 38 seats with 30.0% of first preferences, and Sinn Féin won 29 seats with 26.9%. At a first glance, that 3.1% margin between the two parties’ vote shares is even closer than the First Minister claimed; a uniform swing of a mere 1.6% would be enough to make SF the largest party by votes, and as we all know the largest party by seats gets to choose the First Minister.

But there’s an important difference between seats and votes.

Looking at the 2011 results for each constituency, and applying a (highly improbable) uniform shift of votes from the DUP to Sinn Fein while keeping the votes for other parties at the 2011 levels, it seems that the real figure required to give SF more seats than the DUP is more like 5% than 2%; the DUP could actually trail SF by more than 6% in first preferences overall, and still win more seats. This is partly because the DUP’s stronger constituencies have smaller electorates, and partly because in the last election the DUP tended to get elected with votes to spare while a number of successful SF candidates had tighter squeaks to get in.

Husband, father of three, Irish, European, UK, Belgian citizen, liberal, political analyst, science fiction fan, psephologist, lapsed medievalist, aspiring polyglot.

nwhyte.livejournal.com

#GE16 – FG will win more seats than FF…

Nicholas Whyte on February 28, 2016, 10:13 am | Readers 1884

Another dramatic Irish election, with the exit polls proving to have underestimated the substantial fall in support for the government parties. Fianna Fáil have lurched back to within 1.2% of Fine Gael as largest party, 24.35% to 25.52%, and overnight the two were both on 28 seats. That’s the sort of margin where you can get the party with fewer votes ending up with more seats once the local factors in each constituency come into play. But I’ve crunched the …

The 16 seats to come

Nicholas Whyte on July 20, 2015, 10:00 am | Readers 1991

Back in 2011-12, we had prolonged discussions about the knock-on effects for Northern Ireland of the previous government’s proposals to cut the number of MPs in the House of Commons down to 600, which in Northern Ireland’s case would have meant a decrease from 18 MPs to 16. That didn’t happen in the end, as the Liberal Democrats withdrew their support for the proposed changes, but the legislation remains on the statute book, and unless it is changed (and signals …

Projecting the Westminster votes onto the Assembly

Nicholas Whyte on May 10, 2015, 8:03 am | Readers 1655

I have crunched the numbers from Thursday’s election for each of the Northern Ireland constituencies, simply projecting the votes cast as if the election had instead been for 18 six-seat constituencies, and making a few other assumptions (competent but not perfect balancing of candidates, Unionists transfer to each other more than Nationalists, etc). The raw results are below, with links to each constituency page. I have colour-coded gains and losses, and also indicated in bold the four constituencies where there …

A smaller Northern Ireland Assembly?

Nicholas Whyte on September 17, 2014, 11:03 pm | Readers 1653

Martin McGuinness has today added his support to the notion of cutting the Northern Ireland Assembly to 90 seats from the current 108, ie to five per constituency instead of six. How would this have affected the 2011 election? It’s a fairly straightforward calculation to raise the quote in each seat from 14.29% to 16.67% and work out who would have won. Of course, one has to apply the caveat that if there had been only five seats rather than …

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914

Nicholas Whyte on June 28, 2014, 12:31 pm | Readers 487

These are two photographs, taken in roughly 1914, of the building known to history as Schiller's bakery (which was really more of a delicatessen) on the corner of what are now Green Berets Street and Prince Kulin Quay in Sarajevo, formerly Franz Josef Street and Appel Quay (43.85791 N, 18.42892 E if you want to check it out for yourself). The second picture is taken from the end of the Latin Bridge, behind the photographer. This was the place where …

#EP2014 results so far

Nicholas Whyte on May 27, 2014, 7:35 am | Readers 54

It seemed to take a very long time to get the first results through for the European election yesterday at the King’s Hall. Having originally arranged to help out with the BBC’s coverage from 2.15 to 4.15 pm, I was still there at 6.30 when the first preference votes were announced, and hung around for another hour or so until the second count came through. I did check with Brussels friends who thought that Estonia might be the only other …

#LE14 The story so far

Nicholas Whyte on May 24, 2014, 11:05 am | Readers 88

This is an election with few dramatic changes. The major parties have pretty much stayed as they were, as far as we can tell given the changed boundaries. The DUP, SF and Alliance have perhaps slipped back a little, and the UUP moved forward a bit, but that impression based on yesterday’s counts is slight enough to be reversible today. (My first take from Mid Ulster early yesterday afternoon was that the SDLP and UUP were in trouble; this was …

The 11 new district councils – projecting the 2011 votes

Nicholas Whyte on April 6, 2014, 10:35 pm | Readers 638

For us anoraks, there is both frustration and challenge at the thought of the Northern Ireland council elections next month, taking place for 11 new local government districts, on completely redrawn electoral boundaries, with the full details of the last census not yet out in sufficient detail that the enthusiast can calculate changes down to townland or city block level. However, some of us are trying. In particular, a contributor to Bangordub’s blog identified only as “Faha”, and a contributor …

Ending co-terminosity

Nicholas Whyte on April 29, 2012, 5:19 pm | Readers 155

One of the less frequently used buzz-words in Northern Irish politics is “co-terminosity”, which is shorthand for the fact that members of the Northern Ireland Assembly are elected from constituencies with the same boundaries as those used for Westminster elections. It seems to me that co-terminosity has had its day, and if the long-postponed local government reforms come in, it would make a lot of sense to shift to a system where Assembly members are elected from constituencies which are …