A look at voter registration ahead of next year's council elections

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 Craigavon which has 154,739 registered voters. The smallest is Fermanagh and Omagh with just 86,982 registered voters. 

 

Council	2022	2019	Change	Percentage change
Belfast	235,755	225,698	10,102	4.48%
Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon	154,739	148,665	6,074	4.09%
Newry, Mourne & Down	132,707	126,128	6,579	5.22%
Ards & North Down	123,385	117,097	6,288	5.37%
Derry City & Strabane	113,851	108,495	5,356	4.94%
Lisburn & Castlereagh	109,489	102,666	6,823	6.65%
Antrim & Newtownabbey	105,521	99,253	6,322	6.37%
Mid Ulster	104,942	100,693	4,249	4.22%
Causeway Coast & Glens	103,751	99,344	4,407	4.44%
Mid & East Antrim	102,762	98,788	3,974	4.02%
Fermanagh & Omagh	86,982	84,660	2,322	2.74%

Registered Voters for NI Councils as of August 2022

 

Local Councils do not have to be the same size, however wards are lumped together to try to bring some consistency between the number of votes needed to elect someone. 

In council elections there is one seat for every ward, but each seat does not necessarily correlate to one ward. Wards are grouped together to create District Electoral Areas or DEAs. Each DEA contains between 5-7 wards and elects the number of councillors equal to the number of wards. The chart below shows the five largest and five smallest DEAs as of August 2022.

 

DEA	22	19	Diff.	Council
Black Mountain	27,110	26,131	979	Belfast
Lurgan	26,664	25,452	1,212	Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon
Ormiston	26,342	25,697	644	Belfast
Banbridge	25,431	24,550	881	Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon
Collin	24,754	23,402	1,113	Belfast

Largest DEAs, August 2022

West Tyrone	12,596	12,233	362	Fermanagh and Omagh
Erne East	12,082	12,042	40	Fermanagh and Omagh
Limavady	11,602	11,243	359	Causeway Coast and Glens
Erne North	11,425	11,030	395	Fermanagh and Omagh
Erne West	11,122	10,887	235	Fermanagh and Omagh

Smallest DEAs, August 2022

 

 

When comparing with the previous election though these figures are not the most relevant, instead we should compare how they have changed since 2019. So below are the five DEAs which have added the most and fewest new voters.

 

 

Slieve Gullion	22,476	20,956	1,520	Newry, Mourne & Down
Court	23,658	22,212	1,491	Belfast
Oldpark	23,623	22,136	1,487	Belfast
Waterside	21,094	19,681	1,413	Derry City and Strabane
Ballyarnett	18,936	17,536	1,400	Derry City and Strabane

Top 5 DEAs by new voters registered

 

Erne West	11,122	10,887	235	Fermanagh and Omagh
Ballymena	16,119	15,946	173	Mid & East Antrim
The Moor	13,338	13,183	155	Derry City and Strabane
Foyleside	13,333	13,288	45	Derry City and Strabane
Erne East	12,082	12,042	40	Fermanagh and Omagh

Bottom 5 DEAs by new voters registered

 

We can also compare these by the percentage change since 2019 since larger DEAs are more likely to add more voters.

 

Kilultagh	15,791	14,457	1,334	Lisburn & Castlereagh	9.23%
Antrim	16,475	15,113	1,362	Antrim & Newtownabbey	9.01%
Airport	15,363	14,107	1,256	Antrim & Newtownabbey	8.90%
Ballyarnett	18,936	17,536	1,400	Derry City and Strabane	7.98%
Castlereagh East	16,223	15,034	1,189	Lisburn & Castlereagh	7.91%

Top 5 DEAs by new voters registered as a percentage on 2019’s register. 

 

Newry	19,861	19,482	378	Newry, Mourne & Down	1.94%
The Moor	13,338	13,183	155	Derry City and Strabane	1.18%
Ballymena	16,119	15,946	173	Mid & East Antrim	1.08%
Foyleside	13,333	13,288	45	Derry City and Strabane	0.34%
Erne East	12,082	12,042	40	Fermanagh and Omagh	0.33%

Top 5 DEAs by new voters registered as a percentage on 2019’s register. 

 

As you can see there is a slight difference in these lists with some medium sized DEAs adding fewer voters than the larger DEAs but seeing greater growth in percentage terms. 

 

While every DEAs has added voters since 2019, 30 individual wards have lost voters. The wards to have decreased in size are;

Abbey (Newry, Mourne & Down) -41

Ballycrochan (Ards & North Down) -21

Ballyduff (Antrim & Newtownabbey) -21

Ballymacash (Lisburn & Castlereagh) -23

Belmont (Belfast) -9

Braidwater (Mid & East Antrim) -57

Brookeborough (Fermanagh & Omagh) -6

Cathedral (Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon) -39

Castle Demesne (Mid & East Antrim) -125

Cookstown West (Mid Ulster) -6
Creggan (Derry City & Strabane) -46

Surran & Inver (Mid & East Antrim) -45

Dungiven (Causeway Coast & Glens) -77

Foyle Springs (Derry City & Strabane) -28

Gregstown (Ards & North Down) -2

Killycomain (Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon) -216

Lisnagelvin (Derry City & Strabane) -66

Madam’s Bank (Derry City & Strabane) -5

Magilligan (Causeway Coast & Glens) -15

Maguiresbridge (Fermanagh & Omagh) -10

Northland (Derry City & Strabane) -64

Park (Mid & east Antrim) -82

Portrush & Dunluce (Causeway Coast & Glens) -83

Portstewart (Causeway Coast & Glens) -50

Richhill (Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon) -10

Roeside (Causeway Coast & Glens) -22

Shantallow (Derry City & Strabane) -43

Springtown (Derry City & Strabane) -7

Town Parks East (Mid Ulster) -21

Windsor (Belfast) -33

 

It is unclear why there is such a big difference in the change in some wards. New builds and economic opportunities will play a large part. The general trend shows the electoral register growing much quicker in the east rather than the west. Some wards have had huge increases such as Lagmore (up 633) accounting for almost half of new voters in a DEA containing 6 wards. 

 

The electoral register will continue to grow over the coming months as more people become eligible and decide to register. New voters are the most obvious source of growth for a party’s vote. It will be interesting to see if those DEA’s with the largest change in voter registrations are also those DEA’s with seats changing hands in May. 

 

Over the coming months I intend to look at issues which may be important for voters ahead of council elections. There is also the possibility of another Assembly election before then so I will keep an eye on developments there as well. I may also provide a breakdown of where each council area is adding voters. 

 

At the time of writing LucidTalk are running a their tracker poll gauging support for parties and Northern Ireland’s constitutional position. This poll asks specifically about voting in an Assembly election so we have to be careful when using that data to look towards council elections. Independents tend to perform much better in council elections and the larger parties tend to suffer.

 

The Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool recently ran a tracker poll. I did not write about it because the results looked bizarre so soon after the election in May. The poll received a lot of attention for a few days but most people seem to have forgotten about it. In fairness the Institute can only share the data they collected however any poll which shows more than a third of TUV voters, almost all Conservative voters and a fifth of UUP voters, supporting a United Ireland should be read with a huge pinch of salt.