Northern Ireland Euros
Northern Ireland is doubly unique in European elections. Not only does it differ from the rest of the United Kingdom through having it’s own party system, but it also uses its own electoral system. While Great Britain elected its MEPs by First Past the Post until 1994, then switching to a closed list system, Northern Ireland’s MEPs have always been elected using the Single Transferable Vote.
This has in practice lead to a very static result. From 1979 until 1999 Northern Ireland returned one MEP each for the DUP, SDLP and Ulster Unionists. After 1979 when the Ulster Unionists ran two candidates, these three parties only put up a single candidate each, so there was not even a question of which candidate would represent each party – Ian Paisley and John Hume represented the DUP and SDLP throughout this period, with John Taylor then Jim Nicholson winning for the Ulster Unionists.
In 2004 the pattern was broken. Paisley and Hume both retired, and Sinn Fein replaced the SDLP to take the nationalist seat. Paisley’s successor Jim Allister subsequently resigned from the DUP to found his own party, Traditional Ulster Voice, in protest at the DUP’s entry into a powersharing agreement with Sinn Fein. Jim Nicholson will also be fighting under different colours at the European election, being the first candidate of the Conservative and Ulster Unionists new electoral alliance.
Sitting MEPs and 2004 Results
| First Count | Second Count | Third Count | |||
| 1. | Jim Allister (DUP) | 175,761 (32.0%) | - | - | |
| 2. | Bairbre De Brun (Sinn Fein) | 144,541 (26.3%) | - | - | |
| 3. | Jim Nicholson (UUP) | 91,164 (16.6%) | 124,646 | 147,058 | |
| -. | Martin Morgan (SDLP) | 87,559 (15.9%) | 88,010 | 108,531 | |
| -. | John Gilliland (Ind) | 36,270 (6.6%) | 39,390 | eliminated | |
| -. | Eamonn McCann (SEA) | 9,172 (1.6%) | 9,268 | eliminated | |
| -. | Lindsay Whitcroft (Green) | 4,810 (0.9%) | 5,134 | eliminated |
2009 Candidates
Diane Dodds (DUP) Born County Down. Educated at Banbridge Academy and Queens University. Former teacher. Belfast councillor since 2005. MLA for West Belfast 2003-2007. Married to North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds.
Bairbre de Brun (Sinn Fein) Born 1954, Dublin. Educated at University College Dublin. Former teacher. MLA for West Belfast 1998-2004. MEP for Northern Ireland since 2004.
Jim Nicholson (Conservative/Ulster Unionist) Born 1945, Armagh. Armagh councillor 1977-1997. MP for Newry and Armagh 1983 until 1985, when he was the one of the Unionist MPs who resigned their seats en block to fight by-elections on the Anglo-Irish Agreement who failed to win. Contested Newry and Armagh 1987. Ulster Unionist MEP for Northern Ireland since 1989.
Alban Maguinness (SDLP) Born 1950, Holywood. Educated at St Malachy’s College and New University of Ulster. Barrister. Belfast councillor since 1985. MLA for North Belfast since 1998.
Ian Parsley (Alliance) Born 1977. Educated at Merchant Taylor School, Northwood and Newcastle University. North Down councillor since 2005.
Steven Agnew (Green) Research officer for Brian Wilson MLA. Contested East Belfast 2007 NI elections.
Jim Allister (Traditional Unionist Voice) Born 1953, Crossgar. Educated at Regent House Grammar and Queens University. Barrister. Newtownabbey councillor 1985-1987. Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for North Antrim 1982-1986. Contested East Antrim 1983. Elected as an MEP for Northern Ireland representing the DUP, he resigned from the party in 2007 following the DUP’s agreement to enter into a powersharing agreement with Sinn Fein, in 2007 he founded Traditional Unionist Voice.
“I still think that the DUP, SF and CU will take one seat each but there is certainly a real chance now of Bairbre De Bruin topping the poll. I’ve no time at all for Allister and his brand of politics but I am looking forward to seeing the DUP get a dose of it’s own medicine!”
This would be the result of SF squeezing the SDLP and the CU regaining lost ground from the DUP.
Slugger O’toole are reporting a lot on the Politics Show today which had a panel debate with all seven candidates. Mrs Dodds came off very poorly indeed.
I’m not inclined to shout Allister victory just yet, but I’m starting to think it will be no change, with the DUP scraping the last seat (even if they outpoll the other two unionist parties.)
I think that De Brun will be elected above quota. Whether it is big enough to distribute immediately (where it will go to the SDLP) or the smaller parties will be eliminated first I’m not sure. Either way I’d expect Nicholson to do well enough from the Alliance transfers to be ahead of Allister who would then be eliminated. I suspect his vote will favour Nicholson over Dodds by around 2:1, and he would be next elected. The last seat would then depend on the DUP being ahead of the SDLP which I’m sure would happen.
Most likely…..
….SF, Con, DUP
It certainly won’t be in that order, Peter. Nicholson has not been having an impressive campagin; Allister has, and I reckon there’s a big enough core DUP vote to ensure that Dodds does best of the unionist candidates even after a poor performance on TV. I’d say SF, DUP, UCUNF in that order.
Also, a lot will depend on who is over quota on the first round. I think de Brun will be; ordinarily I’d say that Dodds would be, but with Allister polling well it’s much harder to call. If de Brun is the only candidate over quota then the Green and Alliance transfers will come into play first, and will benefit Nicholson (and Maginess), which would probably mean the DUP gets the final seat through TUV transfers (I really can’t see Dodds ending up behind Allister).
But if Nicholson’s vote collapses and he’s third among the unionist candidates then things could get a lot more interesting. Imagine, for instance if de Brun and Dodds were elected and the final spot came down to a battle between Allister and Maginess, dependent on Nicholson’s transfers. Obviously Allister would be the net beneficiary, but by how much?
Sorry: first sentence of previous post should begin ‘It probably won’t be in that order’; I realize that having said it certainly wouldn’t be SF-UCUNF-DUP I’ve then given a scenario in which it could be. And ‘campaign’, obviously, not ‘campagin’.
If Nicholson’s vote really did collapse then an almost certain, but overlooked, benefactor could be Parsley of the Alliance Party. Alliance would need an absolute minimum of 9 to10 per cent on the first count to be in with any chance and at more than in any previous Euro poll this is asking a lot. But it is not outside the range of their better performances at Westminster or Stormont. Were Parsley to stay in the contest longer than Nicholson then a knuckle baring fight involving Parsley, Allister and Maginnis could ensue with Parsley just taking the seat. Remember that neither side of the divide in NI is likely to score an outright two quotas. In fact this time both could fail to better 45%. At the very least Parsley’s transfers will be very influential on who takes that final seat. This time that might just favour Maginnis.
Its definately Allister the DUP vote is collapseing in many of thier heartlands the unionist fight is between nicholson and dodds for the second unionist seat, maginess is clawing back votes from sf in significant numbers, this is going to be the most interesting count for years
The votes were verified at the Kings Hall in Belfast yesterday ahead of Monday’s count. What impressions are entirely anecdotal but there is near unanimity that Bairbre De Brun will top the poll with something like 28% of the first preference votes. The reports are that the 3 Unionist candidates are in the words of BBC NI’s political editor Mark Devenport “quite closely packed,” this would suggest that the DUP vote has collapsed with Jim Allister polling very strongly in the rural areas as Truthseeker mentioned above. The CU’s vote appears to have held up quite well and there’s evidence that they’ve pulled back small amounts of the vote that they’ve lost to the DUP over the last 10 years. If true that suggests that if they’d put up a better and more articulate candidate than Nicholson then they may have done extremely well indeed.
Apologies for the lack of links as I can’t seem to post any here! but check out Mark Devenport’s blog and Slugger O’Toole. De Bruin to come in first, with Nicholson sure to get in on transfers at some point, the big question is how will the transfers break between Dodds and Allister. Even if she still gets in, the recriminations within the DUP will make the events of the last 36 hours in Labour look like a Sunday School picnic!!
Gutted that Barbara Brown came in first but pleased Jim Nicholson got second seat – link up with the Tories can’t have done too much harm ! Speak as an Irish Catholic Tory who couldn’t envisage voting for the hillbillies in the DUP.
So the headlines here are the DUP dropping large numbers of votes to TUV, but still holding their seat; SF actually falling back very slightly, but heading the poll easily, by default. The UUP didn’t fall back, as many were predicting, instead gaining vote share, coming close behind the DUP, and ultimately taking the second seat, ahead of them.
Among the parties who didn’t take seats, the SDLP picked up a little, but were unsurprisingly still some way off taking a seat. The TUV vote was strong, but they were far enough behind the other two unionist parties that it was clear where the seats were going from the start. Alliance took their best percentage since 1979, but predictions they might come through the middle were well off the mark.
Finally, the Greens took 3.2%, almost double their 2007 Assembly share (when, admittedly, they weren’t on the ballot everywhere), and easily their best ever result in a Northern Ireland-wide election.
Is there a constituency level breakdown available for NI as it would be interesting to see how well UCUNF did on a constituency basis?
There aren’t any official constituency results for NI. Head to slugger for some tallies.
Rumour had it that the TUV ‘won’ north Antrim and took more votes than other unionists in Mid Ulster, while the DUP only ‘won’ North Belfast and East Londonderry (although I’m not sure how much I believe this).
It seems that both Peter Crerar and myself were right about seat order. The rather confident Aidan Thompson was not