UK 2005- Seat by Seat projection Part 20 (Northern Ireland)

[Silent Hunter]

This is working on very limited info. If anyone can point me towards NI polls, I will be grateful.

East Antrim DUP gain from UUP: The UUP won this seat on a majority of 128. With DUP strengthening it will switch. The Alliance will 3rd place again.
East Belfast DUP Hold: This is the most Protestant seat in the province.
East Londonderry DUP Hold: DUP pickup last time, hold this time.
Fermanagh and South Tyrone SF hold: SF picked this up with only 53 votes between them and the UUP. This seat is famous or infamous for the two 1981 by-elections (Bobby Sands anyone?). The Catholic vote is split between SF and SDLP. SF improvements keep this in their column.
Foyle: SDLP Hold
Lagan Valley: DUP Hold- Change of party due to the members defection.
Mid Ulster:SF Hold. McGuiness is returned to Westminster. Well he would be if he ever takes his seat.
Newry and Armagh: SF Gain from SDLP. Mallon is stepping down and this seat is trending SF.
North Antrim DUP Hold: Ian Paisley's seat. He may be throughly objectionable but he's safe.
North Belfast: DUP Hold. This was a pickup last time for them. SF remain in 2nd place, but increase their number.
North Down: UUP Hold.
South Antrim: DUP Gain from UUP. The UUP have a 1,011 majority and this went DUP in the 2000 by-election.
South Belfast: UUP Hold. Smyth is retiring and the DUP may well pick this up. SDLP will also gain votes here.
South Down: SDLP Hold
Strangford: DUP Hold. Pickup in 2001, can't see it going back to the UUP.
Upper Bann: UUP Hold. This is Trimble's seat, he is in danger. He'll hold it just.
West Belfast: SF Hold. Since Adams doesn't take his seat, it's a waste of an election.
West Tyrone: SF pick up in 2001, will stay as such.

Totals
UUP 3 (-2)
DUP 8 (+2)
SDLP 2 (-1)
SF 5 (+1)

In essence, repeat of the Assembly elections.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mallon is standing down

[minionofmidas]

This is working on very limited info. If anyone can point me towards NI polls, I will be grateful.

East Antrim DUP gain from UUP: The UUP won this seat on a majority of 128. With DUP strengthening it will switch. The Alliance will 3rd place again.

Wasn't this a DUP by-election gain during the last parliament that they were pretty shocked to lose again? Might go either way...they probably vote more on personality here as long as there's a "Unionist" next to more than one candidate's name.

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Please. Famous.
This is the one seat in the Province to be anywhere near 50-50 between Prots and Taigs. I think the Protestant vote got split too in 2001. Now that it's got Catholic-held again, though, I guess the SDLP vote will recede, so should be SF hold.

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Forget what I said about East Antrim. Well, not the last line, which holds here too.

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Probably the UUP's safest seat, not in numbers necessarily, but the one they'd lose last. Most middle class part of Ireland.

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One of the SDLP MPs is standing down (I think it's the Mallon Al mentions, forgot what constituency though), and I hear there's a good chance of an SF pickup.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mallon represents Newry & Armagh. In the 2001 council elections (held at the same time as the General election. In NI they reflect partisan breakdowns to a greater extent than the Mainland) SF did very well there... looks as though Mallon has/d a sizeable personal vote.
SF came first in the Assembly elections there and for obvious reasons would like to represent the South Armargh area...
With Mallon standing down I don't see the SDLP hanging on there.

[Peter]

Jeffrey Donaldson, MP for Lagan Valley has defected from the UUP to the DUP since the last election. I expect the DUP to gain this seat because they will carry his personal vote.

Anybody want to start taking bets on whether we could see the death of the SDLP in the next few years?

I heard some rumours a few months ago that Ian Paisley was dying of terminal cancer, though he's not dead yet. Anybody know anything about this?

[minionofmidas]

God would never kill his faithful servant Ian Paisley.

[Peter]

God would never kill his faithful servant Ian Paisley.

After the last set of NI assembly elections I heard one commentator state that the Northern Ireland people had put the peace process into the hands of Hitler and Stalin, but that things could be worse, they could have chosen Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams.

If Ian Paisley is a man of God, then I don't want to meet my maker.

[minionofmidas]

God would never kill his faithful servant Ian Paisley.

After the last set of NI assembly elections I heard one commentator state that the Northern Ireland people had put the peace process into the hands of Hitler and Stalin, but that things could be worse, they could have chosen Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams.

If Ian Paisley is a man of God, then I don't want to meet my maker.

Indeed you don't.

[WMS]

Or in other words, the extremists will get even stronger, right?

[Silent Hunter]

Or in other words, the extremists will get even stronger, right?

Yep. Like I said, repeat of the Assembly elections where the DUP and SF became largest parties.

[Kevinstat]

Totals
UUP 4 (-1)
DUP 7 (+1)
SDLP 2 (-1)
SF 5 (+1)

Based on your current predictions, the totals should be as follows:
UUP 3 (-2)
DUP 8 (+2)
SDLP 2 (-1)
SF 5 (+1)

Kevin

[Kevinstat]

This is working on very limited info. If anyone can point me towards NI polls, I will be grateful.

East Antrim DUP gain from UUP: The UUP won this seat on a majority of 128. With DUP strengthening it will switch. The Alliance will 3rd place again.

In the coming election, if the Boundary Commission's provisional reccomendations for the new Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland, this county contituency will be called Antrim Coast and Glens.  The contituency will lose the Clougfern Ward of Newtownabbey to North Belfast and will gain the Glens of Antrim (including, or at least along with, Ballycastle) from North Antrim.  Nicholas Whyte, a Northern Ireland elections buff with an awsome web site (see the bottom of this post) states that this increases the Catholic percentage of the contituency by over 7% and speculates that this could help the UUP in the form of additional Nationalist voters who will vote for that party's nominee to keep the DUP's nominee from winning the seat.  But the shift of Protestent voters from the UUP to the DUP would not have to be very large to overcome this and the tiny UUP margin from 2001, since a lot of Nationalist voters would vote Nationalist anyway.  I guess right now I'd predict the DUP to win this seat, but it's not a foregone conclusion.

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I share that prediction, but it's another one I'm not certain about.  The DUP have not fielded a candidate there in at least the last to Westminster elections, and if they don't again and there's not as strong an independent Unionist as there was in 1997, watch out.  Lewis is right that there is a good chance of a shift in the Nationalist vote from the SDLP to SF.

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I agree.  The first count percentages of the 2003 Assembly Election could seem to indicate that the SDLP vote is collapsing here, and the loss of a couple rural wards won't hurt Sinn Fein any, but the SDLP still got 4% more than Sinn Fein in that count and the margin probably would have been greater if not for the presence of a Socialist Enviornmental Alliance candidate who got 8% of the first place vote.

I've been at this for a while and need to do something else, so I may or may not continue this reply later.

[WMS]

Or in other words, the extremists will get even stronger, right?

Yep. Like I said, repeat of the Assembly elections where the DUP and SF became largest parties.

*sigh* Northern Ireland is depressing...

[Silent Hunter]

Smyth is retiring at South Belfast.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Smyth is retiring at South Belfast.

Interesting...

[Silent Hunter]

What I think the aims are for the parties:
DUP- get as many seats as possible of the UUP.
UUP- Try not to lose seats to SF and the UUP.
SDLP- Actually have some seats at the end of this.
SF- take unionist seats, electorally wipeout the SDLP.
Conservatives- as many Unionists as possible (helps them in a Hung Parliament situation)
Labour- as many SDLP members as possible, which in practical terms boosts their majority.
Lib Dems-  their sister party, the Alliance Party to do well.