Same again, but more so, in Northern Ireland

An election where no party’s total differed by more than two seats from last time. The DUP and Sinn Féin consolidated further their leads against the UUP and the SDLP respectively. And elections are very much still in these terms, as the table below shows. It shows too that the movement between communities in seat totals is far less sharp than if seen through the first past the post Westminster elections. MLAs are required to designate as Unionist, Nationalist or Other on the Assembly’s register, and votes require a support by qualified majority of both Unionists and Nationalists. This does create a systematic bias against Others, which is perhaps balanced by the Minister for Justice being decided by a full vote on a cross-community basis of the Assembly, rather than through d’Hondt, in effect a guaranteed Minister for the Alliance Party. Even without different rules, however, I’d still expect voting to be along community lines at this stage.

Year	Unionist	Nationalist	Other
1998	58 28 UUP 20 DUP 5 UKUP 2 PUP 3 Ind	42 24 SDLP 18 SF	8 6 Alliance 2 NIWC
2003	59 30 DUP 27 UUP 1 PUP 1 UKUP	42 24 SF 18 SDLP	7 6 Alliance 1 Ind
2007	55 36 DUP 18 UUP 1 PUP	44 28 SF 16 SDLP	9 7 Alliance 1 Green 1 Ind
2011	56 38 DUP 16 UUP 1 TUV 1 Ind	43 29 SF 14 SDLP	9 8 Alliance 1 Green

There really is no better analyst on Northern Ireland elections than Nicholas Whyte, son of historian John Whyte, so check out his blog and site. Slugger O’Toole is good too. But rather than just present a neat table, I might as well add a few thoughts of my own.