The comment thread includes interesting discussion of the results. Thanks, propagators!
At the BBC’s Vote 07 site, it is possible to see live updates from the count centers. Click on any district and there are regular updates on the rounds of counting. STV in action!
See also the Northern Ireland Electoral Office.
In addition, I am elevating from the comments the following information provided by Wilf Day:
According to the predictions assembled at Northern Ireland Elections, the seats to watch as most likely to change hands are Lagan Valley, South Antrim, South Belfast and East Londonderry.
Propagation: Seeds & scions (7)
RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBacks
To graft a scion to this planting, please use the following URL:
http://fruitsandvotes.com/blog/wp-trackback.php?p=1167
(Non-MT bloggers click here to send pings.)
Grafted scions that are not compatible with this planting's stock will die or be pruned out by the Orchardist.
About the comment form
Please note that the name you enter below and the first several words of your comment will appear on the right sidebar of the blog's front page, under "Propagation." New propagators might want to look at the comment policy.
Please do not enter long URLs into the seedbed. Either mark them up using html hyperlinks or convert them to a "tiny URL." Thank you!
The soil is ready for planting:
`
According to the predictions assembled on this excellent site, the seats to watch as most likely to change hands are Lagan Valley, South Antrim, South Belfast and East Londonderry.
Seed planted by Wilf Day — 08 March 2007 @ 12:42
Fascinating results so far. Sinn Fein just took the lead in the number of seats. They more than likely won’t retain the lead, but its pretty wild to see SF and DUP sniping at each other as they co-win the election.
Seed planted by russ — 08 March 2007 @ 18:05
In East Belfast Dawn Purvis has, to the surprise of some, been re-elected on the final count to the seat she was appointed to less than two months ago following the heart attack that killed Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine. A small party that ran only three candidates in East Belfast and the two adjoining districts, it is unique to Northern Ireland. The PUP’s position on the left of the political spectrum differentiates them from the other unionist parties. Its geographic base gives it a seat under STV that a more broadly-based party with more votes would not have won.
Seed planted by Wilf Day — 09 March 2007 @ 05:43
The RTE Irish news has details for each constituency, count by count.
There are some fascinating individual results – Sinn Fein managed to get 5 STV seats out of 6 in West Belfast, which must be something of a record. Their vote was extremely well ‘managed’, i.e. spread evenly between 4 of its 5 candidates so that they all remained in the count without being eliminated or elected.
Seed planted by Lewis Baston — 09 March 2007 @ 10:46
With all counts now completed, the seat distribution is: DUP 36 (+6), UUP 18 (-9), PUP still one, UKUP zero (-1), SF 28 (+4), SDLP 16 (-2), APNI 7 (+1), the first Green ever, and a reelected single-issue independent who opposes the closure of a hospital.
For a while it almost looked possible that the unionist parties could lose their combined majority. As far as I can sort out, and for whatever it’s worth, unionist candidates only got 332,399 first preference votes (48.2%), nationalists and republicans got 294,742 (42.7%), and those not falling into either category, 61,608 (8.9%). I haven’t been able to place six minor independents who got 1,564 first preference votes, and some of my sorting-by-Google may not have been without error. Also, lower preferences often flowed between the traditional groups.
Working against the unionists were minor Alliance Party gains from the UUP, a relatively lower turnout among Protestants, and the slow and steady demographic shift towards the Catholics.
Seed planted by Espen Bjerke — 09 March 2007 @ 17:50
Unionism came close to losing its overall majority. If the SDLP hadn’t messed up its candidate strategy in West Tyrone, and had received 32 more votes in Strangford, that would have been two more SDLP and two fewer DUP, for 53 Unionists, 46 Nationalists and 9 non-aligned. Unionism has in the past tended to have majoritarian leanings in its political approach, which may change in interesting ways in the next session of the Assembly (should it actually take place).
Seed planted by Lewis Baston — 12 March 2007 @ 16:03
Who would have thought Belfast would lead the diversity parade?
Hong Kong born Anna Lo, the Alliance Party candidate in South Belfast, made history by becoming the first ethnic Chinese person to ever win a parliamentary or assembly seat in the UK. Some media say she is the first in Europe.
“I’m a Taoist, not a Christian, and I don’t naturally belong to orange or green,” she said. The Alliance Party, she said, “offers the alternative to tribal politics and people came out to vote for it.”
She got 3,829 first preferences, 369 transfers from the Green Party’s Brenda Cooke, 164 from a collection of seven minor candidates, 48 from the Socialist, 3 from the SDLP surplus and 2 from the surplus of Ian Paisley’s DUP, winning on the 8th count with 4,415 votes.
The first Green Party member, Brian Wilson, narrowly won a seat, with only 9.2% of the vote — 0.65 of a quota — on the first count. By the 10th and final count he had a seat, pushed over the quota by transfers from the Ulster Unionist Party which had 2.14 quotas on the ninth count, electing two members with surplus to transfer. In the previous eight counts he had picked up 0.34 of a quota by transfers from the SDLP, the UKUP, the Alliance Party, the Conservative, Sinn Fein, the PUP, three independents, and even four surplus votes from the winning DUP.
With 6-seater STV and nine parties in the contest, there were lots of transfers.
As well, Brian Wilson was a popular local independent municipal councillor. No other Green came close to winning a seat.
By contrast, look at the SDLP’s Danny O’Connor in East Antrim. He fluked a win there in 1998 from just 0.41 of a quota, helped by poor Alliance balancing and a significant minority of transfers from the UUP which pushed him just ahead of the DUP’s Jack McKee on the final count. In 2003, he pushed his first preference vote up to a respectable 0.55 quotas, but couldn’t repeat the perfect transfer storm of 1998 and lost his seat.
This time, although the nationalist vote (SDLP + Sinn Fein) was 9.8% of first preferences, higher than Brian Wilson’s vote in North Down, on the final count in East Antrim Danny O’Connor was in 7th place, losing with 0.77 of a quota. That’s 3,298 votes that didn’t count. Even in a good STV system, not quite every vote counts.
Note how few votes it takes to elect a member. With six MLAs for every Westminster MP, Northern Ireland has an MLA for every 16,000 people. A well represented people indeed.
Seed planted by Wilf Day — 13 March 2007 @ 01:21