NI Pols

This is a long piece so I have tried to break it down into relevant categories. Some people hate looking at data so I have provided a summary of it here, others will want to see that so I have included some of it. Feel free to look for what you actually want to know and ignore the rest.    Intro.   In any STV election transfers will be important to the final result. In Northern Ireland we elect 90 MLAs, only 20 of them were elected on the first count meaning 70 MLAs were elected thanks to transfers either getting them over the quota or by keeping them ahead of their remaining rivals.   Each constituency elects 5 MLAs. The easiest way to be elected is to secure enough first preference votes to finish inside the top 5 on the first count but 6 candidates managed to win their seats despite finishing outside the top 5. Transfers were therefore vital to electing these 6 candidates.    The data presented below shows how voters distributed their preferences when vo...

The latest LucidTalk tracker poll has released the results of its survey on current party support. The main takeaways are:   ·         DUP winning back support from the TUV and independent Unionists ·         Disaster for the SDLP on 7%. The TUV polled more than 7% and only won one seat in May! ·         SF consolidates it’s position ·         Further growth for Alliance at the expense of independents and smaller parties. ·         UUP stand still, which I think they’ll be content with given Beattie’s leadership needs to be seen as a long time project to win back Alliance and Green voters.    In all not much has changed and only the DUP resurgence falls outside the margins of error of 2.7%. As always we need to look for trends in these polls. So trends to watch out for are:   ·   ...

Voter registration   Local Government elections take place in May 2023. This will be the first set of Council elections since the electoral canvass which erased the old electoral role and updated it. This was needed to clear voters who had passed away or moved away from Northern Ireland in order to have as accurate a register as possible.   The Electoral Office has been posting regular updates on the number of registered voters on their website which can be found  here . I have had a look at the August update and compared it to May 2019, the register used for the last set of Council elections. Here are some interesting breakdowns of how voter registration has changed since May 2019. The local government breakdown gives us exact figures by ward which is helpful.    The largest Council, by far, is Belfast which takes in 235,755 voters. Belfast also contains more wards than the other councils however. The largest of the other councils is Armagh, Banbridge and Craig...