The campaign so far: celebrity endorsements and gerrymandering?

 

Turf wars

The battle of the posters has begun. Several candidates have complained about posters being removed, and in one case burned, while the SDLP candidate for West Belfast complained that he was being intimidated while postering on the Shankill Road. The debate remains over just how important election posters are anyway, but I expect it is good for people to put a face to the name of their candidate. There is also a psychological effect of one area being plastered in one party’s posters, making it seem like they are the only party to vote for in that area. Expect complaints about posters to be commonplace over the next few weeks.

 

Candidates

Candidates have been announced in most constituencies and this will be official soon as those candidates officially register with the Electoral Office. Unfortunately no official list exists yet, we hope that there won’t be a situation here, like there was in Scotland last week, with a communist candidate campaigning for a council seat without officially registering to stand in the election!

 

Endorsements

Celebrity endorsements are rare in Northern Ireland, perhaps for obvious reasons, but this past week saw an interesting one. Ulster and Ireland’s Andrew Trimble took to Twitter to endorse the SDLP’s Conor Houston in Strangford. The SDLP have been perennial runners up in Strangford since 1998 and Houston hopes to get the party over the line. I am reliably informed that Andrew Trimble and Conor Houston are very good friends so this endorsement would have come as no surprise to those who know either of them well. 

 

Polls

As discussed in a previous post polling suggests Sinn Féin will end the election with the most seats. Interestingly the same poll also suggests that around 40% of those saying they would vote for either the DUP or Sinn Féin were doing so to ensure their preferred designation ends up with the largest party. It is also worth noting that such breakdowns come with a greater margin of error than the standard 3% to take that with a grain of salt.

 

Boundary reviews

Possibly the most bizarre story this week happened on April Fool’s Day with many believing the story was an April Fool’s story. The story was Sinn Féin’s submission to the Boundary Commission which made some bizarre suggestions leading to accusations of an attempt to Gerrymander the electoral boundaries. Among the suggestions were; 

·      Abolishing South Belfast and splitting it between West Belfast and East Belfast.

·      Proposing a constituency stretching from Newtownabbey to Craigavon.

·      Splitting Ballymena up between two constituencies.

 

 The Belfast suggestion was most heavily criticised as this proposal would of course see Sinn Féin win 2 of the 3 Belfast seats and the DUP struggle to hold the expanded East Belfast. 

 

Over the coming weeks I hope to look at the individual constituencies to highlight the key battles to look out for. 

 

In the meantime please make sure you register to vote, or register for a postal or proxy vote if you need one, as soon as possible. 

 

https://www.eoni.org.uk

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