Northern Ireland Assembly 2016

[YL]

(All comparisons with 2011.)

East Belfast: count complete, DUP 3, Alliance 2, UUP 1.  Alliance gain from PUP.

North Belfast: count complete, DUP 3, SF 2, SDLP 1.  No change.

South Belfast: count complete, DUP 2, SDLP 1, SF 1, Alliance 1, Green 1.  DUP and Greens gain from UUP and SDLP.

West Belfast: count complete, SF 4, PBP 1, SDLP 1.  PBP gain from SF.  The SDLP margin over the DUP on the last count was 4430 to 4341.

East Antrim: 2 DUP and 1 UUP elected so far.  An Alliance candidate is about to be eliminated, and transfers should then elect the other Alliance candidate; after that it's between SF, UKIP, DUP3 and UUP2 for two seats.

North Antrim: Clearly going to be 3 DUP, 1 TUV, 1 UUP, 1 SF (no change).  There are surpluses to transfer but they're not going to help the SDLP candidate.

South Antrim: count complete, DUP 3, SF 1, Alliance 1, UUP 1.  No change.

North Down: 2 DUP elected.  There's some way to go; they've only just eliminated the Tory.  But I think the other four seats will be DUP3, UUP, Green and Alliance, which would be no change.

South Down: count complete, SDLP 2, SF 2, DUP 1, UUP 1.  No change.

Fermanagh & South Tyrone: 2 DUP and 1 SF elected.  A UUP elimination should elect the other UUP candidate; then I expect the other two SF candidates to be elected; there probably aren't enough Unionist transfers for the SDLP.  So another likely no change.

Foyle: count complete, SDLP 2, SF 2, DUP 1, PBP 1.  PBP gain from SDLP.

Lagan Valley: count complete, DUP 3, UUP 2, Alliance 1.  UUP gain from DUP.

East Derry: 2 DUP elected so far.  I think the most likely outcome is for the other four to be Ind Sugden, SF, DUP3 and SDLP, which would only be a change of independent.

Mid Ulster: count complete, SF 3, DUP 1, SDLP 1, UUP 1. No change party-wise, but Ian McCrea, the son of the truly awful William, lost his seat to another DUP candidate.

Newry & Armagh: : count complete, SF 3, DUP 1, SDLP 1, UUP 1. No change.

"Strangford": count complete, DUP 3, UUP 2, Alliance 1. No change.  The SDLP still can't get in here; they were over 500 short on the final count.

West Tyrone: no-one elected yet.  However, it looks to me like SF 3, SDLP 1, DUP 1, UUP 1, which would be no change.

Upper Bann: 2 DUP elected so far.  I think this looks like no change too, which would mean the remaining four seats being 2 UUP and one each for the SDLP and SF; there are probably enough transfers around to get the SDLP ahead of SF2.

[YL]

I guessed Upper Bann wrong: SF did gain the SDLP seat so it ended up 2 each for SF, DUP and UUP.  Final result DUP 38, SF 28, UUP 16, SDLP 12, Alliance 8, Green 2, PBP 2, TUV 1, Ind (Sugden) 1.

(All comparisons with 2011.)

East Belfast: count complete, DUP 3, Alliance 2, UUP 1.  Alliance gain from PUP.

No change.

I was going on the list here which looks like it had the previous result for that constituency.  On the correct 2011 result, it was indeed no change.

[YL]

I think there is also a pattern for the Nationalist parties to underperform compared to the Catholic proportion of the population in areas where that is low.  For example, according to the census there are just about enough Catholics in Strangford that you'd expect a Nationalist seat, but they keep missing out.  That suggests that quite a few of them are voting Alliance.

And yes, they are a largely middle class party, but they must have got a decent number of working class votes when they won East Belfast, which would surely be a safe Labour seat if it had "normal UK" politics.  (As would West and North.  South would probably be an ancestrally Tory seat, which had gone Labour as the Tories declined in middle class urban areas but then gone Lib Dem in the Blair years, which would have gone back to Labour in 2015, something like Manchester Withington.)

[YL]

I mean, does the SDLP being in opposition put them to the left or right of Sinn Fein? Make them more nationalist or less nationalist? Or are they just "different".

I think they're just trying to be different, not being ex-terrorists no longer being enough.  Similarly, this is the UUP's latest attempt to try to work out how they are different from the DUP.