Time for the latest instalment in Faha’s series Folks !
This 6th analysis of the new district councils will cover the Newry Mourne Down council. This new councils comprises the current Newry & Mourne and Down councils as well as most of the Ballyward ward of Banbridge. The demographic breakdown is 72.32% Catholic, 23.91% Protestant, 0.5% Other and 3.27% None.
The following shows the change in the turnout for the nationalist and unionist parties comparing the 2005 and 2011 district council elections.
The election turnout data for the 2005 and 2011 election show similar conclusions that have been seen other district councils.
#1 There was a steep decline in turnout between the 2005 and 2011 elections.
#2 Unionist turnout is lower than nationalist turnout in the Newry Town, Crotlieve and Downpatrick DEA’s (and probably Slieve Gullion). However, the Protestant population in these DEA’s ranges from only 4% to 13% so the unionist voter deficit is relatively low in absolute numbers.
#3 Nationalist turnout is much lower than unionist turnout in the 2011 election for the Few and the Mournes DEA’s. An additional 2000 nationalist voters would have had to vote in order to equal unionist turnout.
The percentage change in the party vote between 2005 and 2011 is as follows:
In Newry and Mourne there was an increase in the SF vote in 3 DEA’s with a decline in Slieve Gullion. There was a large decline in the SDLP vote in 4 DEA’s with the only increase in Crotlieve. There was a large decline in votes for independent nationalists. Most of the decline in the DUP and UUP vote was in the Mournes where it defected to the TUV and UKIP.
In Down there was a large decline in the SDLP vote except in Downpatrick where it increased slightly. The SF vote declined substantially in Downpatrick but not in the other DEA’s where it was stable. The UUP vote was down sharply and the DUP less so. The unionist decline is significant since the unionist electorate is only half the nationalist electorate. However, the decline in the nationalist turnout is also significant since the nationalist electorate increased between 2005 and 2011 but the overall number of votes was down.
The new DEA’s bear little resemblance to the old ones (see map). Downpatrick and Newry Town are little changed. Most of the Fews and Slieve Gullion were combined into the new Slieve Gullion DEA. Most of the Mournes DEA was combined with part of the Newcastle DEA. The new Slieve Croob DEA consists of parts of the old Ballynahinch and Newcastle DEA’s. Ballynahinch town was added to the Rowallane DEA.
The predicted election results are based on the 2011 turnout.
The average ward electorate is 2891. The total electorate and average ward electorate for each DEA is.
Slieve Gullion 19268 (2753)
Newry 18395 (3066)
Crotlieve 18248 (3041)
The Mournes 20043 (2863)
Slieve Croob 14001 (2800)
Downpatrick 14025 (2805)
Rowallane 14557 (2911)
The current Newry and Down district councils had the following party makeup after the 2011 elections.
SF 19 SDLP 18 Nationalist 3 Alliance 1 Green 1 UUP 6
DUP 4 TUV 0 Unionist (UKIP) 1 Total 53
The expected party strength in the new council with the new DEA boundaries:
SF 15 SDLP 16 Nationalist 2 Alliance 0 Green 0
UUP 3 DUP 4 TUV 0 Unionist (UKIP) 1 Total 41
The new council will have 12 fewer councilors and the net party loss would be.
SF -4 SDLP -2 Nationalist -1 Alliance -1 Green -1
UUP -3 DUP 0 Unionist (UKIP) 0
On the unionist side the new DEA boundaries are very unfavourable to the UUP as they lose half their councilors while the DUP will lose none. The Green and Alliance parties will be eliminated entirely. There is the possibility of a unionist seat in Crotlieve. The unionist electorate is near 14% with a quota of 14.3%. If the SDLP candidates balance poorly and one is eliminated a UUP candidate could be elected with a few SDLP transfers. On paper it appears that there should be 2 unionist seats in Slieve Croob (unionist electorate approximately 33.5% which is 2 quotas). However, the Protestant population here includes a British military base which is within the DEA. While they show up in the census mainly under Protestant they do not vote here so the true electorate is 2% less.
In future elections the UUP seat in Slieve Gullion would be at risk. The DEA is already 1000 voters short of the average. When the DEA’s are revised in the future at least 1000 nationalist voters will be added from Fathom and the nationalist electorate is increasing every year in the current boundaries. There will be a potential 5th nationalist seat in the future in the Mournes DEA as the current unionist electorate at approximately 40% is just over 3 quotas. Boundary changes here and natural growth will also increase the nationalist electorate.
"We in coming days may be" 
Faha
I really like what you are doing in regards all the council areas, but I do have a concern that your statistics are missing demographics which impacting on voting. Namely, that older people vote at a higher % than younger people, and that in Northern Ireland the nationalist side a majority at the younger end of the scale. Table 3.1 in the following document reflects voting here by age specifically against a turnout of 55.7%:
Click to access russell1714.pdf
18-22: 51.5%
23-24: 56.0%
25-44: 54.5%
45-64: 59.0%
65+: 66.0%
Now table DC2117NI from the 2011 census provides us with a breakdown by age of the religion or religion brought up in indicators provided by the good people of NI. If you search for the table on google it comes up. But I have attempted to put this into the same age brackets as above, broken down by Catholic, Protestant and Other
18-22: C=48%, P=43%, O=9%
23-24: C=49%, P=42%, O=9%
25:44: C=48%, P=45%, O=7%
45-64: C=42%, P=54%, O=4%
65+: C=34%, P=64%, O=2%
Taking these two sets of numbers together you will see why Catholics have a lower turn out rate that Protestants – this age turnout rate is not unique to Northern Ireland however as shown in the tables for the UK General election in 2010 – http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout10.htm
Gingray
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Gingray,
Yes, it is true that younger voters are less likely to vote than older voters and since the Catholic voters are proportionally younger they are less likely to vote. This partly explains the lower Catholic turnout. However, the number of Catholics voting has declined in absolute numbers despite increasing electorate numbers. That can only be explained if older Catholics have stopped voting. Your Assembly link is very interesting, especially the data on ethnic voter registration. The turnout figures for the Assembly election are a bit misleading since they are basing the percentage on the electorate only. There were 170,000 people old enough to vote who were not on the electoral register and if those people are included turnout was less than 50% (674,000 voted out of 1,380,000 18+ in the census which is only 48.8% of the voting age population). I do not put much faith in the accuracy of the QUB survey. In that survey over 57% claimed to have voted in the Assembly election which would have been 790,000 voters. Only 674,000 voters were recorded in the election. 55% of Protestants stated they voted which would have been 386,000 votes of the 704,000 Protestants age 18+ in the census. 65% of Catholics stated they voted which would have been 393,000 Catholics age 18+ in the census. The entire vote for nationalist candidates was only 286,000. The survey implies there were more Catholics who voted than Protestants. If so, why were there 13 more unionist MLA’s than nationalist MLA’s elected? Why the discrepancy ? Some people lie in these surveys because it is socially unacceptable to some extent to admit to not voting. It looks like there are a lot of Catholics in this survey who need to go to confession. Comparing turnout between the Catholic and Protestant voting age population shows that Catholic voting age turnout is lower than Protestant voting age turnout in most DEA’s. When I do the new councils of Mid & East Antrim, Antrim Newtownabbey, Lisburn Castlereagh, and North Down Ards there is only 1 DEA where Catholic turnout exceeds Protestant turnout for the 2011 election. In most DEA’s it is much less than Protestant turnout.
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Perhaps you have found evidence of catholic unionists?
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I commented before I read that properly, Please use paras.
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Have you visited Nate Silver’s new website yet, FiveThirtyEight? Looks like the sort of place Bangordub statistics would be right at home in 😉
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For Newry Town and South Armagh I’ve been looking at the Assembly Elections in 11-16 years time which will include all of the old Armagh LGD minus Tandragee and I’m projecting there to be 85,000 Catholics and 33,000 Protestants and 4000 Others/None. On paper this should mean, especially with higher turnout among Unionists, that Dup/Oup should hold two of the six seats. However its on a knife-edge and I suspect that 1500 of the Protestant population living in Silverbridge/Forkhill/Derrymore etc are actually culturally Nationalist. Maybe they are in mixed marriages. For instance in the early 70s there was an English national killed by Loyalists in an attack on a Silverbridge bar who was married to a local lady.
So if this is the case I think that Unionists will not gain one of the 7 seats in Sliabh Gullion and if Nationalists again get motivated to vote that SF/SDLP will take 5 of the 6 Assembly seats in 2026/31.
They’re reducing the Assembly to 96 seats and in 2026, again if Nationalists can be motivated, SF/SDLP could take 50/51 of the Assembly seats with Unionists 40 and Alliance 5/6.
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For Warrenpoint, Kilkeel, Newcastle and Downpatrick which constitute most of South Down in the Assembly Elections in 2026 it should be 5 SF/SDLP and one Unionist with an outside chance of an Alliance/Letsgetalongerist displacing one of the Nationalists.
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faha,
spiffing stuff as usual.
I understood that immediately post GFA the Nationalist background turnout was higher than the Unionist turnout – are we saying that now overall the Nat turnout is lower? At what election post GFA did this occur and what are the % turnouts in the elections since.
Not sure the impact of the ‘yellow’ and other sundry ‘coloured’ voters – as Mickey Copeland might like to call the voters from elsewhere as this would have biggest impact on Nat figs?
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Sammy,
Nationalist turnout was higher than unionist turnout from the late 1990’s and through the 2005 election. In the 2011 election it was lower. Overall turnout for both unionist and nationalist voters has declined compared to 10 years ago but the decline in turnout is occurring in a different context for the 2 blocs. The Protestant voting age population was 694,000 in the 2001 census and 703,000 in the 2011 census. That entire 9,000 increase was due to ethnic national immigrants (including Eastern Orthodox). So the potential unionist electorate is static and the decreasing number of votes for unionist parties in the past 10 years shows up in a lower unionist turnout (though a significant number are now voting Alliance-Green). The Catholic voting age population was 511,000 in the 2001 census and 605,000 in the 2011 census. My article on the undercount of the Catholic population as indicated in the school census indicates that the true number was 620,000 in the 2011 census. That ~110,000 increase is 75,000 native Catholics and 35,000 ethnic immigrants. The DECREASING number of votes for nationalist parties is occurring in the context of a rapidly INCREASING electorate, which is why the nationalist turnout is declining so rapidly. At the current rate of increase, the Catholic electorate will exceed the Protestant electorate in the 2021 census, though the native Protestant electorate will still be greater than the native Catholic electorate by perhaps 30,000. I estimate the overall nationalist voter deficit for the 2011 election at 24,000. 8,000 of that could be attributed to ethnic Catholic immigrants and the other 16,000 to native Catholics. Nationalist turnout was 4% to 5% less than unionist turnout in 2011 but if you exclude the ethnic Catholics it was 3% less.
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Faha, thanks for that comprehensive answer. It will be interesting in the forthcoming elections to see if these trends continue and whether Belfast, with the likely high profile campaign will reverse the trend.
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I’m surprised that the Nationalist parties don’t do more to get young people out to vote. We know that statistically older people are more likely to vote, and how the demographics look at either end of the voting age spectrum. A bit push to get those aged between 18-30 out to the polling booths could make a considerable difference electorally.
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Not necessarily the best place to post as it could describe most of the Nationalist majority areas; Anna Lo’s statement would have seemed to be more tied into an overarching strategy – rather than her out on her own limb for the Euro election – if there were more candidates available for the trickle-down effect.
Brian Feeney earlier stated he thought it was pre-meditated in order to pick up votes off the SDLP but if this is the case (IMHO), she’s only doing it for herself.
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Agree with that RJC, with nationalist inclined potential voters in a clear majority at every age below 41, I fully expect some changes in voting patterns to emerge over the next few election.
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