2024 Westminster election in NI

We all know the headlines, Ian Paisley lost his seat, the DUP lost Lagan Valley, Alex Easton unseated Stephen Farry and Sinn Féin won the most seats, but what are the interesting takes from this election and what should we look for in the future?

Tactical voting

In GB the election will be known for a huge amount of tactical voting with Labour winning a landslide on just 35% of the vote, but tactical voting did not as have much of an influence in Northern Ireland. Parties stepped aside in North down (DUP, TUV & SF), Fermanagh and South Tyrone (DUP & TUV), Belfast East (SF), Belfast South and Mid Down (SF), and Lagan Valley (SF).

In North Down Alex Easton won with a 7,000 vote majority and clearly took votes from Alliance as well as the other unionists. The Nationalist vote is considered strong if it tops 1,000 in North Down so Sinn Féin voters would have had limited impact by voting for Alliance anyway. The DUP still probably have hopes of winning Easton back to the party and so would not want to spoil those (probably very slim) chances, but also had no desire to see a non-unionist win in one of the most unionist constituencies in NI.

On that note, Sinn Féin stepped aside in Lagan Valley and a non unionist did win here with Alliance’s Sorcha Eastwood taking the seat. The nationalist vote was probably around 2,000 – 3,000 votes below where it should have been in Lagan Valley but Eastwood also benefitted from a split Unionist vote. Robbie Butler of the UUP made up ground on the DUP (was this an anti-DUP vote in the wake of Donaldson’s arrest? Or a failure to engage with a candidate who was selected late on and from a different constituency?) while the TUV also ate into the DUP vote. All of these factors worked together to elect Eastwood but I suspect Sinn Féin standing aside was not the major contributing factor.

Sinn Féin also stepped aside in Belfast East. With boundary changes I would expect the nationalist vote to be around 2,000; instead the SDLP won just 619 votes. There may have been some tactical nationalist votes for Naomi Long but turnout in Short Strand, where there are 1,977 registered voters, seems to have been very low with it being just 20% at 5pm (for reference the polling station I worked at in Belfast North was around 34% at 5pm and finished with 57%). The Green Party and SDLP both fielded candidates in Belfast East, but their combined vote added to Long’s still would not have beaten Gavin Robinson.

The final seat where Sinn Féin stepped aside was in Belfast South and Mid Down where the party had a sizeable vote in the Assembly election. At first glance the SDLP still would have won the seat had SF stood anyway, but tactical voting may have come into play. It’a clear Claire Hanna wins votes from people outside the nationalist electorate but might Alliance throw everything at the seat if they knew SF might harm Hannah’s chances? Might Unionists be convinced to vote for that Alliance candidate? I don’t know, but the seat has the potential to be very competitive if all parties contest it. For what it’s worth I don’t think there be much traction in tactical votes to unseat the popular Claire Hanna.

The final area with major parties stepping aside was Fermanagh and South Tyrone. There is a long standing understanding that there would be an agreed Unionist candidate here with it being easily unionism’s best chance of unseating a nationalist. In the end the Unionist vote was around the same as at the Assembly election in 2022 with either low turnout (by Fermanagh and South Tyrone standards anyway) or boundary changes making it look comfortable for Sinn Féin in the end. On the other hand, perhaps Tom Elliot is simply too big a name to replace in just one election cycle.

Unionism

The prevailing narrative is that the DUP had a dreadful election, but I think it presents the party with opportunities. The DUP vote has been declining for a while in North Antrim and East Antrim, with Alliance taking a fair chunk of that vote on one side and the TUV on the other, though it was also a particularly good election for the UUP in East Antrim. The DUP lost South Antrim to the man voted the most popular politician in Northern Ireland, and Lagan Valley in an election which actually had the highest number of Unionist votes in NI. Ian Paisley also lost to Jim Allister in the biggest shock of the night.

Had the DUP lost seats to the same party the response might have been more obvious, but how do they respond to votes being lost on different sides? I think the answer is to look at what went well for the party.

The most important result of the night was Gavin Robinson retaining his seat in Belfast East. The DUP can move forward with him as their leader and seek to address the issues facing the party. Carla Lockhart is a major success story, being the only DUP candidate to win over 20,000 votes. There are other less obvious encouragements as well, Diane Forsyth had a strong vote in South Down and Phillip Brett is leading the party rebuild in Belfast North (though the result must have been quite frustrating. Party sources have suggested turnout was fine in lower north Belfast but Rathcoole was very low).

The UUP won a seat again for the first time since 2015, and it was one of the seats they won in that election. Swann was the runaway winner after moving one constituency south and the party can be encouraged by increased vote shares in East Antrim and Lagan Valley as well. Party sources claimed that they were likely to win Fermanagh and South Tyrone early into the count but the vote and vote share was down on 2019.

The UUP are having success with candidates who have worked hard for many years now to build their voter base in their constituencies, a strategy Alliance has used well recently, and LucidTalk polling has suggested the UUP is doing very well with younger voters (however I would take this with a pinch of salt as the breakdown has a much higher margin of error than the full poll).

The TUV, much to my surprise, largely held their vote from the Assembly election and this won them a seat. Jim Allister is the new MP for North Antrim and while he will be missed at Stormont (regardless of what you think of Allister’s politics it is impossible to deny he has been a strong MLA for North Antrim and incredibly valuable as an opposition voice in the chamber) he will no doubt soon make himself known to the new Labour government.

The fracturing of unionism is evident in this election with 4 different strands of unionsim being represented at Westminster. Alex Easton won in North Down with a sizeable majority showing there is hope for unionism outside of the established parties. For too long the DUP and TUV have been associated with negativity while people are unsure about what kind of party the UUP wants to be. Might we see more independent unionist voices becoming more prominent in the coming years? In addition to Easton (and his soon to be announced replacement) representing North Down, Claire Sugden has accrued a solid vote in East Londonderry and Gary Hynds (formerly of the NI Conservatives) and Stafford Ward (a solidly left wing unionist) won council seats last year at the expense of the DUP.

Nationalism

Quite frankly there is less to say about nationalism. Sinn Féin consolidated their position as the dominant nationalist party and largest party in NI. Their majorities rose in every seat they were defending and their vote share held from the last Assembly and Council elections. Indeed Sinn Féin’s voter base is very consistent in turning out (with Belfast West being an exception but I suspect that is due to their seats being largely safe and not needing as much of a campaign until the the final seat is at risk at an Assembly election due to the sheer difficulty of electing 4 candidates). Sinn Féin will be encouraged by the fact that new, less prominent, candidates had very strong votes and that they significantly reduced Colum Eastwood’s majority in Foyle.

It’s a different story for the SDLP. While the party is very happy at retaining its two MPs (even with reduced vote shares) the rest of the election is a mixed bag. Belfast South and Mid Down aside the SDLP polled very poorly in the East of NI, to the extent that there is very little chance of gains in any target constituencies in a future Assembly election. While the UUP can point to strong performances against the DUP the SDLP were utterly beaten easily in every constituency (except Foyle) by Sinn Féin (though I’m sure Cara Hunter and Colin McGrath will be very pleased with their performances, even if their assembly seats might still be under threat from their nationalist rivals).

Aontú has failed to make any breakthrough in this election and no other nationalist party or candidate registered a noteworthy vote. I’m not sure tactical voting is the cause of this because there is no chance of a unionist winning in most of the constituencies Aontú contested.

Non aligned parties

It was a mixed election for the non-aligned parties as well. People Before Profit will be disappointed at their vote share in Foyle and there was some slippage in Belfast West and the Greens struggled to register any significant vote shares with the party only managing over 1,000 votes in 4 constituencies (2 of which Alliance were in contention to win and one other were the party’s former leader backed a rival candidate).

Alliance had a major win in Lagan Valley with Sorcha Eastwood adding over 5,000 votes since 2019 and unionist voters splitting between 3 candidates. Alliance had around 12,000 -13,000 votes in the last three elections so there is evidence of tactical voting here with the Greens and nationalist candidates performing very poorly. Even at that, it takes strong candidate to win those tactical votes, even party leader Naomi Long didn’t seem to win as many in Belfast East.

Alliance will be disappointed to have lost their seat in North Down as unionism rallied around Easton, however even had Easton and Collins’ votes have split roughly equally Farry still would not have been able to sneak through the middle. Alliance clearly lost votes to Alex Easton and possibly to Tim Collins here. Naomi Long also fell short in her attempt to win Belfast East, the Alliance vote here is probably 2,000-3,000 behind what Long can add so this seat is a difficult one for the party, especially against the leader of the DUP, and popular, Gavin Robinson.

In the rest of NI the Alliance vote largely held (with the exception of around 2,000 votes or so in Belfast South and Mid Down). For Alliance it is the same story it has been for a long time now, the party does well with middle class Protestant voters and middle class Catholics in unionist majority areas, but cannot make a breakthrough in the west of the province or strongly working class areas.

Key takeaways

· The most important result of the election was Robinson retaining his seat with an increased majority.

· Sinn Féin are the largest party from NI at Westminster

· Both Sinn Féin and Alliance have built up reliable voter bases who consistently turn out at election time.

· Unionism (and particularly the DUP) has been presented with some chances to make strategic changes over the next few years with another election not due until 2027.

· Unionism is represented by 3 different parties and an independent.

· Vote share for the parties has not changed much since the 2022 Assembly election

· Unionism has a working class turnout problem (though there are some signs this might be stating to change)

· Tactical voting did not have a major influence in this election.

The NI wide vote share is below

PR elections

Reform won 4 million votes and only won 4 seats, this has again rekindled the debate about whether or not we should elect our MPs using a proportional representation system. I haven’t done the maths because I don’t know the GB constituencies well enough but it has been suggested that if this election was fought using PR (and everyone voted for the same party as their first preference) then the result would have been as follows:

Labour - 222 (down from 410)

Conservatives - 156 (up from 119)

Reform – 94 (up from 4)

Lib Dems 80 (up from 71)

Greens – 44 (up from 4)

SNP – 15 (up from 9)

Others 39 (including NI)

I have looked at how these results would have ended up if we used PR – STV in Northern Ireland and the results are not terribly exciting, essentially Alliance wins one extra seat at the expense of Sinn Féin (or possibly the SDLP if SF voters in Belfast South and Mid Down did indeed vote SF). There are some close results with Alliance and the DUP not far off gains. You can see how I calculated results in the tables below by splitting NI into 5 constituencies based on what made sense geographically and assuming all votes went the same way (and accounting for voting bloc size as well as party result). This method was only complicated by Sinn Féin voters now having an option in Belfast South and Mid Down and DUP voters having an option in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Under PR

SF – 6

DUP – 4

SDLP -2

Alliance – 2

UUP – 2

TUV – 1

Independent Unionist – 1

You can also see below how these results would translate into an Assembly election, I have three sets of results. Essentially, there would be very little change. I might have given the DUP one extra seat (rather than People Before Profit) here as Foyle is difficult to call, I suspect there was a little bit of tactical unionist voting for the SDLP but it’s close either way with the DUP most likely winning by simply outlasting the other candidates.

From left to right:

2024 Westminster votes

2024 Westminster votes if every party stood in every constituency

2024 votes without tactical voting and with expected candidates (eg Doug Beattie in Upper Bann).