NI Pols

  Despite using the STV election system for so long in Northern Ireland I have discovered that a lot of people still do not fully understand how the system works. There has been debate about moving away from first past the post for Westminster elections, but this debate is pointless if people do not understand STV. I have tried to put together an explanation that anyone can share to help understand the system. STV stands for ‘Single transferrable vote’.     Voting   For the first part, forget all parties and candidates you are aware of. Imagine you have been invited to a large breakfast, and every guest has the chance to determine what is on the menu. You are presented with a variety of options and you have to vote for what you want to be served on the day. There will be 5 breakfast options and these will be the most popular 5 as voted for by the guests, but the menu will be decided using a single transferrable vote. To make this more similar to an election I have ad...

  The Northern Ireland Council elections are fast approaching but how much have the councils changed? For this election there are 1,372,323 registered voters, that is up 64,562 since 2019. The local government electorate is slightly different to the Parliamentary electorate. In Northern Ireland we elect 462 councillors which corresponds to one councillor for every electoral ward. A ward is the smallest type of electoral division. There is not strict criteria on what makes up a ward in terms of population, as such we have wards ranging in size from, 5,586 voters (Lagmore) to 1,866 (Fintona). Wards are geographical areas but can change in a review to reflect population changes. It is difficult to achieve a greater parity between ward sizes, to attempt it would mean regular updates, probably more regular than our electoral boundaries are updated. I would expect that, given our population is rising, a future review will result in Northern Ireland having more councillors. The most recen...

  LucidTalk has released its latest NI tracker poll on the level of support for parties. You can see the results along with predicted seats below.     This poll suggests Unionism is strengthening. A quick reading would suggest Sinn Féin and Alliance losing votes to the DUP and independents or very small parties, however it is more likely this poll is suggesting a stronger Unionist turnout. In May 2022 Unionist turnout was poor and just a small shift in favour of Unionism would see a gain of 2 seats.   I have predicted just 3 seats changing hands. In this scenario I see the DUP gaining North Antrim and Strangford from Alliance with Alliance gaining East Londonderry from the SDLP.   As always trends are more important than a single poll in isolation, below you can see the polling trends since May last year.        This poll asked about voting intentions for an Assembly election, but we have council elections happening this month. It is difficul...