Northern Ireland Assembly Election, 2022

[Zinneke]

Why hasn't all the goverment funding been able to create at least some sort of white collar industry ?

What company would want to move there? And the brain drain means that anyone minded to try that sort of thing themselves moves either South across the border or East across the sea.

May's Brexit deal could have turned NI into a Hong Kong style intersection of 2 markets...but the DUP don't want NI to move forward...

[afleitch]

Why hasn't all the goverment funding been able to create at least some sort of white collar industry ?

What company would want to move there? And the brain drain means that anyone minded to try that sort of thing themselves moves either South across the border or East across the sea.

A good point.

Glasgow, which has created a sizeable 'white collar' base, from personal experience has a non negligible Northern Irish workforce.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Why hasn't all the goverment funding been able to create at least some sort of white collar industry ?

What company would want to move there? And the brain drain means that anyone minded to try that sort of thing themselves moves either South across the border or East across the sea.

May's Brexit deal could have turned NI into a Hong Kong style intersection of 2 markets...but the DUP don't want NI to move forward...

NI's drug-based gang controlled economy is already pretty similar to Early Hong Kongs

[EastAnglianLefty]

You get occasional complaints from Unionists about the Northern Irish judiciary and/or civil service being dominated by Catholics. To the extent that it is actually the case, it's largely because the economic structure of the province means that middle-class unionists are most likely to be part of the brain drain.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Hello! I made a map of the first-preference vote by party in each constituency.

Apologies to Aontú, but I only mapped parties which won seats or ran in every constituency, and I was also running out of different gamuts of green shades to use.

[Tintrlvr]

It's interesting to see so clearly on a map like that the UUP being stronger in Antrim while the DUP is stronger in Down. That's certainly not a historical pattern!

[Bakersfield Uber Alles]

Hello! I made a map of the first-preference vote by party in each constituency.

Apologies to Aontú, but I only mapped parties which won seats or ran in every constituency, and I was also running out of different gamuts of green shades to use.

Nice maps!! What do the totals by community look like?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Hello! I made a map of the first-preference vote by party in each constituency.

Apologies to Aontú, but I only mapped parties which won seats or ran in every constituency, and I was also running out of different gamuts of green shades to use.

- SNIP -

Nice maps!! What do the totals by community look like?

Thank you! Here is the map by community/designation.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Can I request a map of party share of parties in their designation? Eg the percentage of the unionist vote that went DUP/UUP/TUV in each seat?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Can I request a map of party share of parties in their designation? Eg the percentage of the unionist vote that went DUP/UUP/TUV in each seat?

This will probably take some more time but sure, I can do it.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

The map requested by EastAnglianLefty is here. By the way, I counted all independents (and microparties) which weren't explicitly listed as unionist or republican/nationalist as Other - I tried to use scales such that this shouldn't have any effect one way or the other, but I'd like to warn you anyway that things could be slightly iffy on the margins.

[YL]

It's obviously because much of their base there has gone to the TUV, but it is striking to see the DUP's share of Unionism so low in the Paisleyite heartland.

[ObserverIE]

It's interesting to see so clearly on a map like that the UUP being stronger in Antrim while the DUP is stronger in Down. That's certainly not a historical pattern!

The UUP vote in North Antrim is a personal vote for Robin Swann who was Health Minister during the pandemic and is popularly viewed as having done a good job in the face of DUP obstructionism. Swann is conservative within the UUP spectrum and is one of five leaders or ex-leaders in the new UUP Assembly party - the remaining MLAs who haven't yet been leader are Robbie Butler (Lagan Valley), John Stewart (East Antrim), Alan Chambers (North Down) and Andy Allen (East Belfast). The relative decline of the UUP in prosperous north County Down is due to leakage to Alliance.

[ObserverIE]

Why hasn't all the goverment funding been able to create at least some sort of white collar industry ?

What company would want to move there? And the brain drain means that anyone minded to try that sort of thing themselves moves either South across the border or East across the sea.

There's a degree of fintech stuff in Belfast and also recently in Newry linked to cross-border companies (e.g. https://fdtechnologies.com/) although the exclusion from the Single Market for services may not help with that in the longer term. The bipartite education system also results in a much larger share of people without qualifications than in the South or in GB.

[Flyersfan232]

Think a northern Irish Labour would do well if funded well and allowed to exist I been told they are a slot of left wingers forced to vote for the two right wing unionist parties because of the union issues surely then and the ones that vote alliance would prefer a better alternative

[warandwar]

Think a northern Irish Labour would do well if funded well and allowed to exist I been told they are a slot of left wingers forced to vote for the two right wing unionist parties because of the union issues surely then and the ones that vote alliance would prefer a better alternative

This was the case like 60, 70 years ago, but the younger disaffected union vote is pretty well taken by Alliance now. Different economy these days.

[Tintrlvr]

Think a northern Irish Labour would do well if funded well and allowed to exist I been told they are a slot of left wingers forced to vote for the two right wing unionist parties because of the union issues surely then and the ones that vote alliance would prefer a better alternative

This was the case like 60, 70 years ago, but the younger disaffected union vote is pretty well taken by Alliance now. Different economy these days.

Also, being more unionist than the Alliance is pretty gross and inherently a right-wing domain. Labour certainly wants nothing to do with that and never really has historically.

[Oryxslayer]

Think a northern Irish Labour would do well if funded well and allowed to exist I been told they are a slot of left wingers forced to vote for the two right wing unionist parties because of the union issues surely then and the ones that vote alliance would prefer a better alternative

This was the case like 60, 70 years ago, but the younger disaffected union vote is pretty well taken by Alliance now. Different economy these days.

Additionally,  a whole part of Alliances pitch is that the fundamental economic and organizational questions are being ignored in favor of the sectarian one, to Northern Ireland's detriment.  Which is essentially what Flyers is wondering about. Of course the Alliance takes those concerned with economic issues from all directions of the spectrum though, and proposes solutions that focus on practicality and applicability rather that whether it's conservative or socialist.

[warandwar]

Think a northern Irish Labour would do well if funded well and allowed to exist I been told they are a slot of left wingers forced to vote for the two right wing unionist parties because of the union issues surely then and the ones that vote alliance would prefer a better alternative

This was the case like 60, 70 years ago, but the younger disaffected union vote is pretty well taken by Alliance now. Different economy these days.

Additionally,  a whole part of Alliances pitch is that the fundamental economic and organizational questions are being ignored in favor of the sectarian one, to Northern Ireland's detriment.  Which is essentially what Flyers is wondering about. Of course the Alliance takes those concerned with economic issues from all directions of the spectrum though, and proposes solutions that focus on practicality and applicability rather that whether it's conservative or socialist.

They also dont have the same working class vote that previous labor parties or PUP had. Of course, north of ireland doesnt have the same working class.

[CumbrianLefty]

Think a northern Irish Labour would do well if funded well and allowed to exist I been told they are a slot of left wingers forced to vote for the two right wing unionist parties because of the union issues surely then and the ones that vote alliance would prefer a better alternative

Historically there was a NI Labour Party to fill this supposed gap. It was, at best, a qualified success.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The NILP didn't do a bad job of representing the non-sectarian vote (and it had a degree of cross-community appeal in parts of Belfast: people forget this) particularly given the electoral system and the Unionist Party's nasty habit of manufacturing a 'crisis' before every election, but it reflected a Northern Ireland that was very different to today: at the time the province still had significant industrial employment, including, critically, shipbuilding, and while it would be an error to exaggerate the extent of working class solidarity in that society, there was a degree of it, even if it was filtered through a sectarian lens. After thirty years of civil war, not a trace of this world remained: several surviving NILP figures (including David Bleakley, who was its most prominent figure) were actually members of the Alliance Party in the 1990s. These days the urban economy in Northern Ireland is dominated to the public sector to an extreme degree and while class certainly exists, there is no sense of a working class with an existence outside of the sectarian framework that dominates life, society and politics. In a situation like that, a broad-ranging liberal party that absolutely includes people who are essentially social democrats in all but name is the logical centre of gravity for non-sectarian politics, not a 'labour party', as much as that might be theoretically preferable to many of us.

[YL]

It looks like this is going to be repeated in December because of the Assembly deadlock.

[Epaminondas]

Giving veto power to a sectarian single-issue party with a rigid electorate is a disaster, who'd have guessed.
Westminster needs to rescind the right to collapse Stormont by any one party, whichever side it is from.

We may have to wait for the next Labour gov for that to happen.

The last Assembly elections were 6 months ago, and we're 4 weeks into injury time without a government.

Least promising of all is that the DUP is still sitting pretty at 27% voting intentions (+6), having clawed back some of the TUV support surge back in May.

A swing of 50% of the TUV electorate would mean the DUP are only really at risk in 2 seats, both to the UUP, in Foyle and East Antrim, and they could conceivably recover a seat in North Antrim and Belfast West.

Meanwhile, SF only really have a shot at growing their majority in Upper Bann and East Derry, neither very promising.

So it looks likely we'll be seeing a 28-26-18 Assembly next January, with still no end to the gridlock in sight.

[CumbrianLefty]

An election next month now looks unlikely, the SoS has the power to kick that into the long grass for at least a fair while - and looks like they are exercising it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though exercising it in a manner that only fossilises the deadlock - without pressure from their own electorate, the only thing that will make the DUP come back to the table is the fear that direct rule might mean Westminster doing things they're opposed to.