How should I vote in the Northern Ireland election?

 

I am not telling you who to vote for! I just want you to understand how to make the most of your vote in the STV system we use in Northern Ireland.

 

I have heard people talking about tactical voting and asking what the best way to vote is. In short tactical voting should not be your primary concern here, this is not a Westminster election where we may find ourselves voting against our least favourite candidate rather than voting for our favourite. In this election vote for your favourite and then transfer to your next and so on. You can give every candidate a preference if you wish or stop at your first vote but you have a chance to have a big say. My advice is to keep transferring until you feel all the other candidates are as bad as each other. 

 

How do transfers work?

After all of the valid votes are counted we can work out a quota. This is taken by dividing the total number of valid votes by one more than the number of seats available and then adding 1. So if there are 60,000 votes and 5 seats available then we divide the 60,000 by 6 and then add 1, so the quota would be 10,001 because it is only possible for 5 candidates to get to that figure. 

Anyone who beats the quota will have their votes transferred to the second preferences on the ballot paper, though those have to be divided by the surplus they have so we often see fractions of votes here. 

Candidates are also eliminated from the bottom with the last place candidate being knocked out and the second preferences being distributed. This continues until all 5 seats are filled. It can take a while, but it ensures we can vote for our favourites rather than against out least favourites.

Are transfers really that important?

In the 2017 Assembly election transfers, and the lack of, played a big part. In North Belfast Alliance’s Nuala McAllister finished just 556 votes behind Sinn Féin’s Caral Ní Chuilín. After 7 counts the DUP still had a surplus of 361 votes. These were not transferred because they would not have changed the result. Count 7 was the last time votes were transferred. In addition to William Humphrey having a surplus of 361 votes, Paula Bradley had a surplus of 1,543 votes. In count 7 her votes transferred as follows; Alliance - 312, SDLP -114, Sinn Féin – 7 (nothing transferred to the DUP because Humphrey had already exceeded the quota himself). However of those 1,543 votes, 1,061 votes were non-transferrable. This means that no others who had voted for the DUP as their first preference or transferred to the DUP down the ballot had expressed a preference for any of the candidates for the SDLP, Sinn Féin or Alliance. Had Alliance been able to attract those transfers, they would have won the seat easily. Out of the 1,800 DUP surplus, they would have needed less than a third to overtake the second Sinn Féin runner. You can see the visualisation below and you can find these for every constituency at http://electionsni.org if you want to see any others.

 

 

Transfers also played a major role in helping the SDLP win a seat in Lagan Valley last time around. In 2017 Pat Catney finished 7^th on first preference votes with just 8.4% of the vote, yet he won the seat. After 8 counts Catney finished 433 votes ahead of Brenda Hale with 44 Alliance votes not transferred as they could not have changed the result. After the first count Catney was 771 votes behind Brenda Hale but he benefitted from winning plenty of transfers and from the DUP not quite balancing their votes well enough. On the final count the UUP had a surplus of 3,525 votes. They transferred as follows; Edwin Poots - 581, Pat Catney – 1,156, Brenda Hale – 854. There were 934 votes leftover. Had they transferred to the DUP then Hale would have won. It was also tight because the transfers were split between 2 DUP candidates and only 1 SDLP candidate. This was bad for Hale because Poots would have won the seat even with no transfers from Robbie Butler’s surplus. You can again see the visualisation below.

 

 

Any better ways to understand this?

I recently led a BB badge class to teach the boys how STV worked. To do that we actually ran an election where we asked the church to vote for its favourite breakfast. You can see the ballot paper below.

 

 

We were electing 3 of the 7 breakfasts. I’ll tell you how I would vote here. I don’t like a cooked breakfast, I find it too heavy but I could eat something if I had to, so Ulster Fry and Scrambled egg were getting no votes from me. I also think a cereal bar is a pathetic breakfast, it’s a snack, it can’t be breakfast, so I wouldn’t vote for that either. 

 

Cereal is my favourite breakfast so I voted for that, even though I expected it to win comfortably. I also expected Ulster Fry to win easily so I had to transfer to other things I might like. I gave my second choice to fruit salad to make sure that something reasonably healthy won. After that I gave my 3 to Bacon Bap and 4 to Toast. I would not eat any of the other 3 as a breakfast option so I didn’t even bother expressing a preference. I wouldn’t really want toast either, but I would eat it if the other options were any of those other 3 so I voted for it anyway. 

 

You can see the results below. In this particular case the 3 top candidates all won and all 3 were from different parties. You will also notice that 2 candidates were elected on the first count as they had more than the quota of 25.

 

 

Transfers are very important in these elections. You may not like a candidate or their party but you may like their rivals even less. Vote for your favourite candidate and if they lose then your vote will be transferred to your next preference. Also do not assume your favourite candidate will win and decide to vote for someone else. If a candidate has too many votes then their surplus gets given to the 2^nd preferences. All of these votes and transfers matter. Think about who you will support and transfer to and use your vote wisely.