I submitted my predictions for Nicholas Whyte's contest last night (although I had been working on it off and on for a few days actually - I took the contest very seriously). Here are my seat-by-seat predictions, with some explanations for them in parentheses).
East Belfast: DUP (David Ervine's exit from the race and support of Empey, plus some tactical voting from Alliance and nationalists, could make the result close, but Robinson has always done better in Westminster elections than the DUP has in other elections, and I think he will survive)
North Belfast: DUP (I was tempted to pick SF to win an upset here, and am still considering changing my prediction, because of the results of the 2003 Assembly elections where the two main Nationalist parties combined to receive about .2% more of the first place vote than the two main Unionist ones, but two other clearly Unionist parties, one which probably contributed to the UUPs low showing in that election and the other whose voters will likely vote for Dodds, combined to receive about 6.8% of the vote in that election, plus the clearly Unionist parties (DUP, UUP and PUP) received only about 1% more of the first place in the 2001 local goverment election while running about 6.6% ahead in the Westminster election that year, so I think Dodds will survive)
South Belfast: UUP (I know a couple UUP big wigs, yes the incumbent and a former party leader, are supporting the DUP candidate, but the UUP's McGimpsey has topped the poll in the last two Assembly elections, in which Westminster incumbent Smyth was not a candidate but in which the UUP led the DUP anyway, plus there may be some tactical Alliance and homeless PUP votes for McGimpsey, so I predict him to win, albeit narrowly. As for the SDLP, they didn't get half the combined UUP and DUP vote in 2003, and with an experienced Sinn Fein candidate and MLA in the race I don't think they can do that this time, which they would have to in order to win.)
West Belfast: Sinn Fein (I'm not going to waist my time explaining that one)
East Antrim: DUP (Beggs has too small a cushion from 2001 to survive, especially when his then-and-now DUP challenger is now an Assembly member from
that constituency
)
North Antrim: DUP (see West Belfast)
South Antrim: UUP (I get the sense that Burnside has found his niche as an elective office holder of his party, which should make him a stronger candidate; I think the DUP ads accusing him of flip-flopping will backfire, even though they are responding to Burnside making similar accusations of the DUP)
North Down: UUP (It seems like the main battleground here for quite a while, especially in Westminster elections, was the UUP v. Bob McCartney. Even though the DUP have made significant gains here in the past few elections, not counting the 2001 Westminster elections where they didn't stand, and seem like the logical inheritors of the McCartney/UKUP vote, they have not run a campaign for a Westminster seat here since at least 1973 and I have doubs as to whether the local DUP organization has developed enough to take out Hermon at this time.)
South Down: SDLP (yes, Sinn Fein made major gains in the 2003 Assembly election, but McGrady was not running in that election and he seems to have a significant personal vote here. I consider him to be a strong favorite in this election.)
Fermanagh and South Tyrone: Sinn Fein (lack of Unionist unity candidate + growth in the SF vote (2003 notwithstanding) = Gildernew reelected)
Foyle: Sinn Fein (a tough one to call, but I've heard about a "row" Mark Durkin, SDLP's leader and candidate here, got in with another MLA and that the SDLP campaign countrywide is poor, and Nicholas Whyte seems to think that a lot of Hume's vote in 2001 was personal, so I picked SF to take this seat)
Lagan Valley: DUP (I went with the crowd here, since a lot of the contestents probably knew better than I how much of Donaldson's vote in the past was because he was a member of the UUP and how much of it was in spite of it (or at least not because he was a member of that party). Besides Lord Molyneaux is supporting Donaldson, and I think, as a former MP from that constituency, his support will definitely be helpful.)
East Londonderry (don't like the name I chose to call it? tough! that's the official name of the constituency): DUP (the countrywide winds are definately not blowing the UUP's way and seem very unlikely to do so enough for them to take a seat like this)
Mid Ulster: Sinn Fein (McGinness would have a shot even if his only challenger was from the SDLP and the Unionists and other non-Nationalists came out and voted; as it is, this race is no contest.)
Newry and Armagh: Sinn Fein (all the signs point to an SF takeover here: Mallon not standing; the low SDLP vote here in the 2003 Assembly elections; this not being the only seat the SDLP has to defend, and it being the one with the least chance of success for that party)
Strangford: DUP (The only question here is whether Iris Robinson gets a majority of the vote, although it will also be interesting to see if the UUP vote rebounds slightly from 2003.)
West Tyrone: Sinn Fein (go to
http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/awt.htm and scroll down to the Results Table and look at the "2003a" (2003 Assembly election) row - talk about fractured opposition, and the top-polling MLAs from each party besides Alliance, plus Deeney are running; Deeney could possibly break out and get within 20% of Doherty, but anyone getting even as close as 15% seems unlikely.)
Upper Bann: DUP (David Trimble seems to currently be playing a similar roll within Northern Ireland Unionist politics that Tom Dacshle played within American politics in 2003 and 2004, the leader of a party or party caucus which lost its majority in the last election (I'm referring, regarding Northern Ireland, to the 2003 Assembly Election, which actually works well even in Westminster terms since Donaldson defected to the DUP not too long after the latter party's victory in that election) and is trying desperately to bring his party back. Just as the responsibilities (or at least how Dacshle handled them) of being Minority Leader are credited by many as contributing to his defeat at last November, I imagine many voters in Upper Bann, including some who have voted for Trimble in the past, are getting tired at some of his party's attacks on the DUP. The fact that a majority of contestents had (and still have) picked the DUP to win this seat was also a factor in my prediction of a DUP gain.)
My predictions for the number of council seats won by each of the five major parties (and all other parties and independents combined) (this will be the tiebreaker if more than one contestant correctly picks the winner in every parlimentary constituency) is as follows:
DUP 158
UUP 133
SF 124
SDLP 106
Alliance 23
Others 38
So far, if I am correct as to how the individual preditions are displayed, only one other contestant so far has picked the same winner in each parlimentary constituency as I, and that contestant's current prediction of the number of council seats won be each party seem far too slanted toward the DUP and against the UUP. Here they are:
DUP 185
SF 125
UUP 100
SDLP 100
Alliance 28
Others 44
I know it's very likely that other contestents will make the exact same Westminster picks as I before the polls close on May 5, but at this point I feel I have a decent shot of winning.
Kevin
