Constituency Focus: Fermanagh & South Tyrone

Fermanagh & South Tyrone is known for having consistently high turnouts in elections. It can be argued that the constituency’s election of Bobby Sands was a catalyst for Sinn Féin entering electoral politics. Nationalism has had a slight advantage over Unionism but turnout is very important here, which perhaps leads to high turnouts. The most recent Westminster election results have come down to just a handful of votes between Sinn Fein and the UUP. 

 

Current seats

Sinn Féin currently hold 3 seats having split their vote perfectly and capitalised on a wave of enthusiasm for the party in 2017 to prevent the SDLP from winning. The DUP and UUP have one seat each. Michelle Gildernew of Sinn Féin is the area’s MP.

 

Current bloc quotas

Nationalism posted a low in 2019 of 43.1% and a high of 52% in 2017’s General Election. The local election results may be skewed with several independent candidates whose constitutional affiliation I do not know standing, but if we do ignore this low then Nationalism has been rather steady at around 50%

 

Unionism has gone from a low of 42.6% in the last Assembly election to a high of 45.5% in the 2017 Westminster Election. This is one area where the non-aligned group has not made any significant  inroads in to the Unionist vote. 

 

This is one of the worst constituencies in Northern Ireland for the non-aligned bloc ranging from a low of just 2.5% to a high of 5.2%. Matthew Beaumont of Alliance has been working hard to improve Alliance’s vote but they remain behind where they are in other similar constituencies with the party perhaps suffering from the history of close battles between Unionists and Sinn Féin in parliamentary battles. 

 

Recent electoral trends

The constituency has been a battle of which bloc can get its vote out. The Unionist bloc has had more success with a unified candidate with Tom Elliot winning the Westminster seat in 2015 and coming close in the subsequent two elections. Alliance have seen significant growth, but from a very small base. The party’s growth has come somewhat more from Nationalism than Unionism. The DUP has been the larger Unionist party (in elections where they stand), it may be interesting to see how much that gap narrows or flips without Arlene Foster on the ballot paper. 

 

Candidates

Sinn Féin are defending their 3 seats with Colm Gildernew, Jemma Dolan and Áine Murphy. The SDLP candidate is Adam Gannon. Denise Mullen is standing for Aontú and Emmett Kilpatrick is representing People Before Profit. 

 

Deborah Erskine, who was co-opted into Arlene Foster’s seat, is standing for the DUP alongside Paul Bell. Like the DUP the UUP also have 2 candidates with incumbent Rosemary Barton running with former MP Tom Elliott. Alex Elliott is representing the TUV. 

 

Matthew Beaumont is hoping to continue Alliance’s advance and Kellie Turtle is standing for the Greens. Cross Community Labour have a candidate running, he is Donal O’Cofaigh, who was elected to the Fermanagh and Omagh council in 2019. There are also 2 independent candidates here; Derek Backhouse and Emma DeSouza. I know very little about the former but DeSouza may be familiar to people following her court case around citizenship and Nationality. I am unsure if either candidate is running on a particular community designation. 

 

Battles

Sinn Féin’s third seat is vulnerable, in fact it came as a surprise that they held all 3 last time. They will need to balance their vote well to ensure they remain above their rivals. The SDLP are probably the biggest challengers but Aontú and DeSouza could also take votes from Sinn Féin. Order of eliminations may be important and if any of Sinn Féin’s candidates are outside the top 5 at any time then they will probably lose the seat with rivals appearing to be more transfer friendly. 

 

The Unionist battle will be exciting. Erskine may be able to rely on Arlene Foster’s popularity in the constituency. Erskine worked for Foster and the former First Minister has been campaigning for her replacement. Paul Bell is likely the second candidate and will most likely only win if all polling is wrong and the DUP walk the election. The UUP may have an issue, no party wants to lose a sitting MLA however Tom Elliott arguably has a greater profile in the constituency than Rosemary Barton. The UUP have been highlighting that they have plenty of female candidates this year, but from what I can tell none of them (maybe I’m being harsh) are favourites for their seats. It would be a PR disaster for Beattie if the party’s only female MLA were to lose her seat to a party colleague. There is no chance Elliott is running as a sweeper candidate, he clearly expects to win the seat. So, will he take it from Erskine, Barton or even a Nationalist? 

 

Fermanagh and South Tyrone is a weird seat. It is actually possible for Unionism to win 3 seats here despite having fewer votes. The DUP were just a few hundred votes away from a second here in 2017. With so many Nationalist candidates on the ballot and the potential for transfers to go anywhere in the early stages of the count there is an outside chance the third Sinn Féin runner could find themselves behind another Unionist with too few transfers remaining. The chances of this happening however, are indeed slim. Unionism will only make the gain here if polling is wrong and there is actually a larger gap between the two main blocs. 

 

Polling

Sinn Féin will be encouraged by recent polling showing them closing in on the 2017 vote share and seeing the SDLP slide further behind. This bodes well for them retaining all 3 seats. This is most likely a constituency where an Alliance surge will not yield a seat, but transfers may be important in deciding who wins the final 2 seats. It would take a monumental swing for the UUP to win the DUP's seat. 

 

Issues

Both DUP candidates are from the side of the party that backed Arlene Foster, and later Jeffrey Donaldson, last year and so voters may be encouraged to heavily back them in a show of support for the more moderate wing of the DUP. Brexit is an important issue, Fermanagh is on the border and may be effected by any change in the NI Protocol arrangements. Fracking has been a big issue for years with the area seeing significant opposition to the controversial practice happening in Fermanagh. Indeed O'Cofaigh, standing for the CCLA, also stood for 'Fermanagh Against Fracking' in a separate DEA in 2019. 

 

Predictions 

This is a tough one to call, all logic suggests Sinn Féin should not lose their seat based on current polling but they were very lucky to win it last time. I suspect Sinn Féin will win 2 with 1 each for the SDLP, DUP and UUP. The more interesting call may be which UUP candidate I believe will win, I’ll keep that to myself though.