Unionist High Water Mark?

A snap Westminster election has resulted in a minority Conservative UK government dependent on a "supply and confidence" agreement with the DUP. Having secured 10 seats in the North it is enough to bring the Torys over the 326 seats needed for a majority.

As always this blog is concerned about the impact in Ireland and the Nationalist strength in the north of the country. There was almost identical turnout among the two communities in the March Assembly election which brought an end to a period of Nationalist voter apathy. Unionists responded with a surge in turnout, an additional 50,000 votes bringing their total to 395,000 votes.

Given that the March Assembly result left only 1,200 votes between the DUP and SF and some 20,000 votes between Nationalism and Unionism this election was portrayed by the DUP as a vote for the Union. If Unionism could not bring out it's voters in mass in this election it never will. And this is why I believe this is the high water mark for Unionism. 400,000 votes is required to beat Unionism on their best day.

The SDLP and UUP have been left with no seats. SF won 7 seats and the DUP won 10. The independent Unionist Sylvia Hermon won the other. Of course if the SDLP had accepted the will of the Nationalist people and responded to the Unionist pact, North and South Belfast would not have gone to the DUP. They got their answer on that one.

The DUP will not agree to the SF demand for implementation of previous agreements before Stormont can be reinstated. Therefore another Assembly election is likely in the near future as is another Westminster election for that matter. The possibility of the Nationalist vote exceeding the Unionist vote in one of these is there. As always turnout will be key. If not in 2017/2018 it will happen as some stage in the immediate future and calls for a Unity Referendum cannot be ignored. Interesting times ahead!

Crocodile Rock

Well this has been coming. The premise of this blog is that demographic change will be translated into political change. We had not seen this in the elections cycle from 2014 to 2016 due to Nationalist voter apathy. However Nationalists have awoken from their slumber. Turnout matched and slightly exceeded turnout of Unionists.

The result was 40 seats for Nationalists and 40 for Unionists. Not only did Unionism loose its majority in the Assembly, it lost a plurality. First preference votes showed Nationalism at 42% with Unionism at 44%. There was only 20k votes between Unionism and Nationalism and a mere 1,000 votes between the DUP and Sinn Fein. The times they are a changing.

The challenge for Nationalism now is to push on from this and not become complacent. There are still over 300k Catholics and 600k Protestants who did not vote for a Nationalist party. These are the people who should be targeted.

Assembly Election 2016

The final ballot papers have been counted. The Assembly will be made up of 38 DUP, 28 SF, 16 UUP, 12 SDLP, 8 Alliance, 2 PBP, 2 Green Party, 1 TUV and 1 Independent seat. 56 MLAs will designate as Unionist, 40 as Nationalist and the remaining 12 as Other. Those who will designate as Nationalist took a mere 36% of the first preference vote, down over 5% on the 2011 Assembly Election. From the European elections of 2014 to this Assembly Election, this election cycle has been extremely disappointing for Nationalism.

There has traditionally been a correlation with political affiliation and religion. Democratic change has meant that the Catholic population in the North is due to overtake the Protestant population in 2017. In 2023 there should be a Catholic electorate majority (or plurality). The strategy is that as demographic change takes place and the Catholic population grows, so too will the Nationalist vote. Once the Nationalist vote has overtaken the Unionist vote a referendum on Irish Unity would be triggered. This would result in the reunification of Ireland.

This strategy is currently in tatters and Nationalism is in crisis. Why has the Nationalist vote collapsed?

People Before Profit received 2% of the vote and took two seats.  PBP are an All Ireland Party and say they oppose the border yet they will not designate as Nationalist as they see themselves primarily as Socialists. A motion on the border needs to be put in the early days of the Assembly to test them on this. Even if we say the Nationalist vote was 38% this is still a miserable return.

Apathy again is the real problem. Many Nationalists no longer vote for SF or the SDLP because of a perceived liberal view on social issues such as abortion and same sex marriage. Many don't vote because they believe that partaking in the Northern Assembly is akin to administering of British rule in Ireland. Most though it seems don't vote because they simply don't give a shit!

Nationalist Voter Apathy

After the formation of the gerrymandered, sectarian "Protestant state for Protestant people," the Catholic minority community suffered decades of discrimination, inequality and sectarianism. Essentially second class citizens, many were forced many to emigrate. In spite of this, demographic change started to occur in the 1960s which saw the number and proportion of the Catholic population begin to increase.
                       

Partition was not kind to the Nationalist political parties either who obtained the vast majority of its support from the Catholic minority community. Majority Unionist rule led to gerrymandering and denial of the right to one man one vote. 

As demographics changed and the Catholic population grew so too did the Nationalist vote. Nationalists which once made up a mere 18.9% of the vote, had by the time the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 almost reached parity with Unionists.

                       

From around the year 1998 until 2011 the Nationalist voted seemed to plateau at around 42%. The results of the 2014 local and European elections came as a shock. The combined Sinn Féin and SDLP vote slipped back to 38.5%. The result of the 2015 Westminster election shows this was no once off. The SF/SDLP vote of 38.4% is almost identical to the prior year. So what has happened to Nationalism? Why despite demographic change has the Nationalist vote stalled and gone into decline? Could it be electoral apathy?

The graph below is an estimate of electoral turnout based on election figures and community background figures from the census. It assumes that he vast majority of those brought up in a Catholic community background vote for or are inclined to vote for Nationalist parties and the vast majority of those brought up in a Protestant community background vote for or are inclined to vote for Unionist parties. It also assumes that everybody is on the electoral register.

Nationalist voter apathy was catching up with traditional Unionist voter apathy up until 2009 when parity was reached. Although the proportion of Nationalists voting declined at a greater rate than Unionists, the Nationalist percentage of the vote was holding. This was a sign of further demographic change.

The 2014 European and local elections saw a surge in Unionist turnout. The Nationalist vote continued it's decline and remained well below the Unionist turnout in the 2015 election.

There were two significant events which took place between the 2011 and 2014 elections which could have caused the Unionist turnout to increase well beyond that of Nationalists.

On 4th December 2012, Belfast City Council with it's first ever Nationalist plurality voted to change the policy of flying the Union Flag from City Hall. Instead of the flying of the flag 365 days per year it would only be flown on 17 designated days. The Union Jack which had flown over Belfast City Hall every day for more than a century was taken down.

There was an electoral canvass in 2013. Basically the Electoral Office NI wiped clean the electoral register, an electoral canvass took place in each constituency and a new electoral register was published. The new register contained details of 1,241,079 electors out of an eligible electorate of 1,405,808 based on the 2011 census. The new register contained 88.3% of the eligible population. Could it be that the new register contained a much higher proportion of additional potential Unionist voters than Nationalist voters? The Loyalist reaction to the removal of the Union Jack from Belfast City Hall was bedlam on the streets. Could the overall Unionist reaction have been getting the maximum amount of additional potential voters onto the electoral register?

Clearly Unionists have become more motivated to turnout and vote. But that is only one side of the equation and not something Nationalist can change. What can be changed is the huge increase in apathy among their own base.

In order to resolve this major problem the reasons for increasing apathy must be identified. Then solutions must be formulated.

Possible reasons for Nationalist voter apathy:

• Despondency. Not much progress has been made since the GFA. The British Government and Unionists have failed to implement outstanding issues of past agreements such as the Irish Language Act. No progress has been made on the A5, the Ulster Canal, Narrow Bridge or an independent University for Derry. Little or no jobs have been created outside of Belfast. No fiscal powers have been secured. Amazingly, both SF and the SDLP have entered into subsequent agreements without first obtaining guarantees on implementing past agreements.
• The collapse of the Irish economy is likely to have had an effect. Note the large drop in Nationalist turnout between 2007 and 2009. The annual Peace Monitoring Report suggests support for Unity dropped at the height of the recession.
• Lack of choice. Unionists have the DUP, UUP, TUV, UKIP, PUP, Conservatives etc. Nationalists have two left wing parties with very little separating them bar their view on the past.
• Lack of Nationalist co-operation. The Unionist pact worked to perfection. In PR elections Unionists will encourage voters to give a preference to all other Unionists on the ballot paper. Past experience suggests SF and SDLP will not do the same.
• Many practicing Catholics are not enamoured by SF and SDLP views on abortion and same sex marriage.
• The SDLP are a party lacking individuals with charisma and leadership. They are turning non SF inclined voters off who are either staying at home or voting for Alliance and People Before Profit.

Possible Remedies:

• A Nationalist Panel should be set up with representatives from all interested parties to research the reasons for increasing  apathy and report back on it's findings with remedies.
• Granting Irish citizens in the North voting rights in Presidential Elections would energise Nationalists and encourage more political organisation on an All Ireland basis. This should be a key strategic objective.
• More choice is required. The North is crying out for a centre right All Ireland party. Fianna Faíl who have promised to contest the 2019 assembly elections may offer the best opportunity.
• Reduce the legal voting age to 16.
• Learn from the Scottish National Party success in Scotland and replicate where practical.
• Campaign to get the maximum number of people registered to vote.
• More focus on getting those living/travelling abroad and those in 3rd level education to use their postal or proxy vote.
• Both SF and the SDLP need to put aside their narrow political interests and co-operate for the greater good.
• An Irish Passport Office should be set up in Belfast and/or Derry.

Four Green Fields

As the dust settles on the Local and European elections, it is clear that the story of the elections has been the rise in Sinn Féin. A rise that manifests itself with triple the number of SF councillors and the election of Lynn Boylan, Martina Anderson, Matt Carthy and Liadh Ní Riada to the European Parliament in each of the four constituencies. A rise that dramatically changes the Irish political landscape.

We find ourselves in a new political landscape not because Sinn Féin has a monopoly on Irish Nationalism, far from it. It is because we now have a situation where we will have proper left and right politics. No more will we have a mish mash of coalitions from opposite political spectrums. We will either have a conservative government or a left leaning government.

Already in Kerry County Council we see for the first time ever an alliance formed between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. If it can be done in Kerry where some of the most hideous events of the Civil War took place, it can be done at a National level. The next government will be a FF/FG grand coalition. That will only be replaced by a left leaning coalition headed by the Shinners. The rise of Sinn Féin has ended the Irish Civil War!

The rise of Sinn Féin also poses serious questions for the SDLP, Labour and Fianna Fáil. The SDLP vote has virtually collapsed from it's hay day of the John Hume and Seamus Mallon era. As the party struggle to stay relevant their support continues to decline. They have now been overtaken in their heartland of Derry as the largest party by Sinn Féin. However their loss in support to Sinn Féin occurred in previous elections. This time their voters stayed at home or to a lesser extent lent their vote to the pro United Ireland Alliance candidate Anna Lo.

Alliance's resolve under sustained attack from Loyalists furious with the party's decision to remove the Union Jack from Belfast City Hall except for designated days has also led to more green votes for Alliance at the expense of the SDLP. The removal of the flag is significant as it led to a surge in the turnout rate of Unionists. Combined with a continuing trend of apathy among Nationalists and a greener Alliance vote (70% of their transfers in the European election went to the SDLP) the result was a combined Nationalist vote of 38.5% the lowest for many years.

Labour as expected were annihilated in the Local and European elections. The party promised the sun, moon and stars to the electorate before the last General Election. Given the economic climate and their status as junior party in the government coalition they were never going to be able to deliver. They sold their soul. The electorate took their revenge. The space they once held is now occupied by SF and other small left leaning parties. Their is no way back. Or is there?

To me the solution for both the SDLP and Labour is obvious. The two should merge. "Labour, The Social, Democratic and Nationalist Party". It makes sense the more you think of it. Both occupy the same left of centre sphere in the political spectrum. Both are in decline. The SDLP are accused of not being Nationalist enough. What better way to highlight Nationalist credentials by becoming an All Ireland Party. Labour reeling from an annihilation in the elections need to dosomething radical to recover.

Fianna Fáil performed well at local level. Given the fact that they were the party that killed the Celtic Tiger by overspending to the extent of eroding competitiveness and spearheaded the economic collapse of the country by fuelling a property boom without regulating the banks, I would say they performed very well. However the party failed to get a candidate elected to the European Parliament other than Brian Crowley in the South. The Nationalist vote has gone to Sinn Féin and it is hard to see how they will get it back. I mean how can a party call itself "The Republican Party" yet organise on a 26 county partitionist basis. It's a walking contradiction. They need to follow through on their commitment to organise and contest elections in the North.

In the North the Nationalist voter turnout is in decline. The Unionist voter turnout is increasing. This is counteracting the demographic change that is occurring. Before the election we had the obligatory Unionist scaremongering about their being too many Unionist Parties which would split the Unionist vote. Rather than split the Unionist vote it maximised the Unionist vote. Voters had more choice, more people knocking on their doors and more publicity.

Nationalists on the other hand had only two left leaning parties to vote for. An invisible SDLP and a Sinn Féin struggling to shake off the shackles of the Troubles. Who are the Catholic Nationalist Republican community conservative in outlook to vote for? Who are CRNs with a strong business ethic to vote for? Who are CRNs who hold strong Catholic beliefs on same sex marriage and abortion supposed to vote for? Nationalism need more choice, more parties and more focus on addressing voter apathy. It needs more cooperation. The SDLP refuses to cooperate with SF in marginal seats in Westminster and Assembly elections. SF discourages voters from transferring to the SDLP. The result is more Unionists in a position where they can dominate.

European Elections 2014 - Preview

At the 2013 DUP conference last weekend there was not one mention of the on-going Haass talks on the contentious issues of flags, parading and dealing with the legacy of the past. Instead the DUP set out it's stall for the upcoming elections in May.

No decision has been made on whether they will run one candidate or two in the Euro election. Peter Robinson tells us the decision will be based on what ever is best for Unionism. In other words Peter is telling us he will not do anything which will risk handing the third seat to Nationalists.

The DUP will strike a deal with the UUP and agree to run one candidate. This will allow the UUP's Jim Nicholson pole position to hold the third seat. In return for this concession to the UUP, the DUP will demand co-operation/Unionist Unity or agreement from the UUP not to stand candidates for the marginal seats in the 2015 Westminster elections. The UUP will agree as loosing their European seat will leave the party without a single MP or MEP. This could be a death knell for the party.

Sinn Féin may themselves very well be considering running a second candidate (probably Belfast based) to run alongside Martina Anderson. This may run the risk that Alex Attwood of the SDLP will take the Nationalist seat. However with the STV system this is unlikely. SF voters will transfer to SF candidates. The announcement of two SF running candidates would also put it up to the DUP to do likewise.

The decision to run one or two candidates may come down to Psephology (election science) whereby a general rule is that if a single candidate is likely to receive a quota of 1.55, it is likely that two candidates could be elected with the help of transfers.

Already confirmed to be fighting for the maximum of two Unionist seats are Dianne Dodds (DUP), Jim Nicholson (UUP) and Henry Reilly (UKIP). It is expected that John McCallister will run for NI21.The PUP have indicated that they will run a candidate as has Jamie Bryson, the outspoken 'fleg' protest organiser (first to loose £5k deposit?). The TUV being the TUV will not want to further fragment the Unionist vote will stand aside and give their backing to another candidate (probably Henry Reilly).

So with a rather crowded Unionist field of six or seven candidates as well the 'Others' being represented by Ross Brown of the Green Party and an unconfirmed Alliance candidate, there will be talk/scaremongering in the months ahead about the possibility of Nationalists winning the third seat.

In the 2009 European Elections Unionists received 237,436 votes accounting for 49% of total votes. Nationalists received 204,673 (42.2%). A difference of 32,763. Turnout was low at 42.8%.

Will a congested Unionist field result in any significant number of votes being lost in the transfer system of STV due to voters not transferring all the way down the line?

What effect will a low turnout have? Turnout has been declining in Nationalist areas at a faster pace than in Unionist areas. Will this trend continue?

What effect will voter apathy have? The recent drive to get names on the new Elector Register showed Unionist areas had more success. Greater voter apathy among Catholics/Nationalists? Has the decision by Belfast City Council to reduce the flying of the Union Jack over the City Hall had motivated the PUL community to turnout in greater numbers to the polling booths?

And of course what effect will demographic change since the last election have?

These are the factors which will determine who wins the all important third seat.

Election date set

Despite earlier reports that the Assembly and Local elections would be held earlier than the May 5 date of the Alternative vote introduction referendum, it has been confirmed  that the date for all three elections will indeed be held on May 5.

The main issues which are likely to dominate the elections include the strong possibility of Martin McGuiness becoming First Minister, the impact of the cuts to the Northern Ireland budget, the economy, the Irish Language Act, the issue of parading and the possible reduction in the number of MPs.

The impact that the TUV will be of interest (Jim Allister has stated that he intends to stand in most of the constituencies) as will the effect of Tom Elliots take over of the leadership of the UUP. It will also be interesting to see what form of "Unionist Unity" measures are put in place and how the three main Unionist parties split of the votes pans out. What will be the effect this will have on Martins McGuinesses chances of becoming head honcho?

On the Nationalist side, can SF continue to gain ground on the SDLP or will Margaret Richie be able to costruct a SDLP revival?

Reduction in number of MPs

According to a BBC article, Nigel Dodds has spoke out against the passing of the bill to change the Westminster election voting system and reduce the number of Northern MPs.

The question arises as to why Dodds is critical of the bill. We already know that he will be struggling to hold his North Belfast seat at the next general election if current demographic and electoral trends in that constituency continue.

At present Unionists hold 9 seats, Nationalists hold 8 and Alliance hold 1. As the Alliance party won a seat in East Belfast due to the unpopularity of Peter Robinson, I think it is fair to say that many of the votes for Alliance in the constituency were drawn from Unionist voters.

Lets assume that Unionists hold 10 seats and Nationalists hold 8. Assuming that there are no changes to constituencies or the number of MPs at the next Westminster elections and Gerry Kelly wins North Belfast as expected, we will be left with 9 Unionist seats and 9 Nationalist seats. For the first time ever unionists will not have a majority of seats.

Under the proposals being pushed through by the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition in Britain the number of MPs in the north could be reduced from 18 to 15 seats, a loss of 3 seats. Does Nigel know something the rest of us do not? Is he worried that if the number of MPs are reduced by 3, it might be possible that a situation may arise where Nationalists actually have more MPs than Unionists after the next general election?

Political support

The CAIN website produces an interesting table of political support for the three blocks (nationalist, unionist and other).  I have reproduced this table in graph form.



The trend is clear. It is one of unionist decline and subsequent nationalist improvement. In 1986 the westminster by-elections were as a result of the resignation of all unionist MPs in December 1985 in protest to the Anglo Irish Agreement. As nationalists did not resign their seats there was no by-elections for these seats. Nationalists did stand in the marginal constituencies held by unionists, hence the 18.6% of the vote. There is also a drop in the unionist vote in the 1977 local government election and a less pronounced drop in the nationalist vote. These are offset by an equal but opposite increase in the 'other' vote so it is safe to assume that the other candidate took votes from unionists and to a lesser extent nationalists. Other than those two elections the unionist and nationalist lines are fairly smooth considering it will never be entirely smooth due to variances in turnout.

Im sure unionists will argue that the trend has leveled off at the turn of the century. However when one considers that nationalist turnout has decreased in every election since 2001, and by 2010 it had decreased 15.6% since the 2001 westminster election, yet the nationalist vote has held firm (abeit the unionist turnout also declined by 8.7%) it is obvious that the surge in nationalist numbers continues and will do until it overtakes unionism in the not too distant future.

Electoral turnout

One of the main arguments unionists make for the narrow difference between the number of votes for unionism and the number of votes for nationalism (57,102 in 2010 westminster election and 42,272 in 2007 assembly election) in elections is that there is a greater level of unionist apathy among the electorate than nationalists.

In order to test this theory it is necessary to get a breakdown of both nationalist turnout and unionist turnout in recent elections.

For want of a better system, I have used the 18 constituencies as the basis for my analysis. If we take the eight constituencies held by nationalists and get the average turnout for each of these constituencies, we can assume that subject to an inevitable margin of error, that this average represents nationalist turnout. Similarly the same methodology can be used to calculate the unionist turnout. I have excluded european elections from our analysis due to the low turnout compared to assembly and westminster elections

The results are clear. In the early part of this decade nationalists were more likely to vote than unionists and the argument of greater unionist apathy was valid. However, In more recent elections the turnout of the two blocks seems to have leveled off. What is worrying for unionists is that as the nationalist turnout has declined one might expect the gap in the difference in votes between the two blocks to increase. However it has in fact fallen from approximately 70,000  to approximately 40,000! Unionism has reason to worry.