Philip McGuinness – Page 2 – Slugger O'Toole

Analysing the 2023 Local Elections: Part 3: identity bloc performance, estimated six-county vote, SDLP and UUP decline, spoiled votes.

Philip McGuinness on May 29, 2023, 9:19 am

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a group of colorful balloons

(Part 1 can be found here.) (Part 2 can be found here.) Identity bloc performance The nationalist bloc is the largest in 13 of the 15 border EAs (excepting Erne North and Cusher), having overtaken the unionist bloc in Faughan and Clogher Valley. Eight of the 11 EAs that touch Lough Neagh are now N-bloc plurality or majority, including four east of the Bann. East/west of the Bann has limited relevance as geographical shorthand to describe relative political dominance in …

Local Election 2023 Analysis, Part 2: the myth of unionist vote shredding, turnout, party performance:

Philip McGuinness on May 26, 2023, 7:01 am

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(Part 1 can be found here.) Was the unionist vote shredded, and did it lose seats as a result? On Saturday, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson stated “when you dilute the unionist vote sometimes that means unionist candidates don’t get elected”. It is a common refrain from many unionist politicians down the decades that the existence of so many unionist parties shreds the vote and loses seats: this is untrue for the 2023 local election. The DUP gained 23.3% of the vote …

Why was the 2023 Local Election the Most Seismic NI Election Ever, and How Might Identity Politics Evolve?

Philip McGuinness on May 21, 2023, 8:00 pm

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black and white wall mounted paper

Why is this the most seismic NI election ever? Northern Ireland, and its eventual six-county shape, remained part of the UK in 1920 to secure unionist rule in north-east Ireland. Unionist communities in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan were sacrificed by James Craig and Edward Carson to ensure the greatest possible areal extent of secure unionist rule. For the first time since the franchise was widened in the 1880s, the unionist vote is less than the nationalist vote. The nationalist bloc …

What to watch for in the Local Elections…

Philip McGuinness on May 18, 2023, 7:00 am

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white and yellow plastic blocks

For those of us who love elections, the next few days are like childhood anticipation of Christmas. So here’s my list of things to watch for. I am not focusing on council seats gained or lost: Michael Hehir has done so comprehensively in his wonderful set of Slugger articles. Rather, I am looking at how party and bloc vote share might change compared to the 2019 local elections. A quick note on terminology: majority means over 50% of the vote; plurality means a larger share …

What might the Assembly look like in 2030 and 2040?

Philip McGuinness on February 17, 2023, 7:00 am

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person holding clear glass glass

Unionism is facing a huge electoral challenge. Unionist political ineptitude since 2016 has been honed to a fine art: RHI, crocodiles, rejection of Teresa May’s backstop, and cosying up to Boris have all got them nowhere fast. The result has been to convert many pro-union voters to anti-unionist-party voters, as witnessed by the rise of Alliance. And DUP politicians have essentially ignored Peter Robinson’s 2012 exhortation that unionism must reach out to Catholic voters. Demographic decline makes such a genuine …

A PM (Prime Mediator), not FM-DFM, for NI

Philip McGuinness on January 9, 2023, 7:00 am

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woman wearing gray jacket

Stormont is dysfunctional. The Belfast Good Friday Agreement (BGFA) was supposed to bring people together in a new era of tolerance and power-sharing. Instead, party elites have sporadically cobbled together a stuttering non-war dispensation that has rolled out mediocre governance, leaving health, RHI, education and other services as beacon exemplars of how not to run a polity. Peace dividend it is not. Good governmental efficiency it is not. There must be a better way. The BGFA is predicated upon the …

Recognising Ulster-British Identity in a United Ireland: a Federation of Ulster-British Communities (FUBC).

Philip McGuinness on August 18, 2022, 7:00 am

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If you like my work and you'd like to support me, you can also consider a donation > http://www.paypal.me/helloimnik. Thank you 😌A quote that couldn’t be truer.

The Belfast Good Friday Agreement recognises that: “… it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish, accepting that this right must be achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of …

Unionism Continuing to Slide: the 2022 Assembly Election and Longer Electoral Trends…

Philip McGuinness on May 18, 2022, 7:27 am

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A serene gradient from red to smoky blue-gray seems to mask a chaotic scene underneath, expressing a wide range of emotion. Looking like a NASA closeup of Jupiter, this image reveals sediment in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast.

After the 1997 Westminster election, unionists held 13/18 Westminster MPs, 61/110 1996 Forum seats, and were about 10% ahead of nationalist bloc votes. Now they have 8/18 Westminster seats, 37/90 Assembly seats and were about 0.5% ahead of the nationalist bloc vote in the 2022 Assembly election. Unionism has become a minority in all election types and looks close to losing its vote-plurality status. There are always variations of turnout and tactical voting depending on the type and significance of …

How Might Differential Constituency Turnout Affect a NI Referendum?

Philip McGuinness on August 25, 2021, 8:22 am

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Recently I speculated on how differential turnout could impact on any future referendum on a United Ireland. Having done a bit of number-crunching since then on Assembly election results since the seventies, focusing on the post-GFA elections in particular, the answer seems to be: six years. Differential constituency turnout means that the turnout varies between constituencies. Stating the bleedin’ obvious, I know, but there seems to be a political edge to it in NI. Border (mostly nationalist) constituencies have greater …

What if NI Voted by County? Analysing the 2019 Local Election Results…

Philip McGuinness on July 27, 2021, 8:09 am

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It would be interesting to compare current voting patterns with those of 1921 when NI came into being. The exact location of Northern Ireland’s land border – once Thomas Agar-Robartes, MP, let the partition cat out of the Home-Rule bag in 1912 – was always going to be by county, given the Westminster constituency boundaries and census returns at the time. Today’s Westminster, Stormont and local government constituency/electoral area boundaries cross the six county boundaries more often than they did …

You Are Wanted: A New Preamble for The Irish Constitution…

Philip McGuinness on June 18, 2021, 11:31 am

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Reading David McCann’s Slugger article reporting on Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael Ard Fheis speech that sets out his vision of what Irish unity could be, I was saddened to read a comment from the_swerve: “Fundamentally, people here want to feel wanted”. To the_swerve, I would say: you are wanted, all of you. There is a great desire among many southern Irish people to actualise their belief in the essential fraternity of sharing this island together. The vast majority of southern …

Northern Ireland at 100: Unionism failing; Nationalism stuck; Moderates thriving…

Philip McGuinness on April 27, 2021, 8:00 am

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One hundred years after Partition, Northern Ireland is still in existence. It would surely come as a big surprise to many who thronged the streets of Belfast on June 22nd 1921 – the date King George V opened the first NI Parliament in City Hall – that unionism is now a minority in Stormont. It would also surely come as a big surprise to many nationalists in 1972 that the state set up to guarantee unionist rule in north-east Ireland …

A Song for a Shared Island…

Philip McGuinness on July 28, 2020, 7:32 am

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There are many conversations happening across the island about what a shared island might look like. Talking is vitally important but so, too, is singing. What might a shared island sound like? To be emotionally carried along by – and to sing along with – a beautiful song that appeals to the more noble, inclusive and generous parts of our common humanity is one of the greatest creative acts we can experience. Is there a song that encapsulates the desire …

Time to Reform First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) for Westminster Elections?

Philip McGuinness on June 30, 2020, 8:47 am

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In the 2019 Westminster general election in Northern Ireland, the 18 successful candidates gained 359,000 votes out of a valid poll of 799,034. This represents only 44.9% of the electorate. A clear majority of voters are not represented in Westminster. Unionist voters in border areas are not represented; nationalist voters from North Antrim to Upper Bann to Strangford are not represented. Twice as many Alliance voters are unrepresented as are represented. The DUP garnered 30.6% of the vote and won …

COVID-19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: Dublin’s success will pose dilemmas for both SF and Unionists:

Philip McGuinness on May 5, 2020, 7:09 am

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Number-crunching the past few days’ COVID-19 statistics is bringing clearer evidence by the day that RoI seems to have definitively turned a corner in its struggle against this frightening adversary. If we define ‘peak covid’ as the date when a jurisdiction had its largest 7-day rolling average of new cases, we find that peak covid occurred on April 15th for the UK, April 18th for the RoI, and April 20th for NI. The graph shows the 7-day rolling averages since …

COVID-19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: Four stories in the Republic:

Philip McGuinness on April 28, 2020, 7:22 am

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We are a small island, but the story of the COVID-19 pandemic is being written differently in each county. The four graphs added to COVIDWATCH show these differing narratives. Continuous data for Northern Ireland councils were not available (when this data is available it will be displayed). One of the graphs is shown above. Methodology: New cases can vary hugely within a couple of days. These huge undulations can hide underlying trends. A 7-day rolling average will allow to some …

COVID-19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: Early clusters difficult to flatten:

Philip McGuinness on April 21, 2020, 12:39 pm

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The COVID-19 cases for April 20th have been used to draw two maps: one showing the rate of incidence of counties and councils relative to their jurisdictional average, and the other showing the rate of change over the April 15-20 period. The ‘rate of incidence’ map shows essentially the same pattern as did the earlier two maps (for April 9/10 and April 15). Once a county or council got off to a bad start with respect to the number of …

COVID19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: Cases Rates of Change by County and Council:

Philip McGuinness on April 16, 2020, 6:43 am

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The rate of increase of Covid19 cases on the island seems to be slowing down in the greater Dublin and Belfast metropolitan areas. However, Donegal and Derry & Strabane have had a large rate of increase, as have Monaghan and Roscommon. Also, commuter-belt counties around Dublin-Wicklow have also had increases greater than average. Dublin, Wicklow, Belfast, Lisburn & Castlereagh, Cavan, Westmeath, and Monaghan are the only counties or councils whose cases per head of the population is above their jurisdictional …

COVID19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: The Geography of COVID19 in Ireland

Philip McGuinness on April 13, 2020, 6:35 am

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The map below displays how your county or council is doing in terms of COVID19 cases, relative to the jurisdictional average for COVID19 cases. The approach taken is to work out a county’s /council’s share of its jurisdictional population, and then work out its share of jurisdictional Covid19 cases, then divide this ‘case’ percentage by the population percentage. That will tell us whether the county/council is above or below average. <br> The map shows how the greater Dublin and Belfast …

COVID19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: Both Irelands possibly plateauing for new cases; NI death rate less bad than RoI’s; Global situation: disimprovement:

Philip McGuinness on April 9, 2020, 6:39 am

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The deaths per million curves for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland continue to flatten. New cases appear to have stabilised somewhat.The Republic of Ireland has 71.96% of the island’s population, but 75.58% of the COVID19-related deaths. This divergence has increased in recent days. Is the better performance of the North regarding COVID19-related deaths a function of having the NHS rather than the two-tier system in the South? Simon Coveney seemed to be essentially accepting this when he stated …