Next up is Fahas analysis of West Belfast. Interestingly he predicts a first seat for Eirigi in Black Mountain, remember where you saw that first if it comes to pass! It will also be interesting to see the electoral fallout resulting from the Gerry Adams debacle.
This analysis of the new Belfast council will cover the West Belfast DEA’s of Court, Black Mountain and Collin. These new DEA’s include most of the current Court DEA, the Upper Falls and Lower Falls DEA’s and 85% of the Dunmurry Cross DEA from Lisburn. 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 for the 2005 and 2011 elections indicate:
#1 Nationalist turnout remained the same in Upper Falls; one of the rare DEA’s where voter turnout did not decline between 2005 and 2011.
#2 Unionist turnout is low in the overwhelmingly nationalist DEA’s of Dunmurry Cross, Upper Falls and Lower Falls
#3 Nationalist turnout is very low in the overwhelmingly unionist Court DEA.
The change in the party vote between 2005 and 2011 is as follows:
There was a moderate decline in the SDLP vote in the Lower Falls DEA and a more substantial decline in the Upper Falls DEA. There was a large decline in the SF vote in Lower and Upper Falls. Most of that decline was due to defection of SF voters to various dissident republican candidates. There was also a substantial decline in the UUP and DUP vote in Court DEA.
The new DEA’s have changed substantially. The new Court DEA includes all of the current Court DEA (except for the section of Crumlin ward north of Crumlin Road) and a section of Legoniel ward. It also includes the Lower Falls wards of Clonard, Falls and part of Beechmount. Black Mountain DEA includes all of the current Upper Falls (except the Ladybrook ward) and the Upper Springfield, Whiterock and most of the Beechmount wards from Lower Falls. Collin DEA includes Ladybrook ward and most of the current Dunmurry Cross DEA except for half of the Seymour Hill ward and the entire Derryaghy South ward.
The average ward for Belfast is 3535. The total electorate and average ward electorate for each DEA is.
Court 20772 (3462)
Black Mountain 25060 (3580)
Collin 22028 (3671)
You will notice that there are significant ward average discrepancies between the 3 DEA’s. The Court DEA is 438 voters short of the average for Belfast wards. Black Mountain is 315 voters and Collin 816 voters in excess of the average. The unionist Court DEA is below average and the nationalist Black Mountain and Collin DEA’s are above average. This has significant implications for the election results in the Court DEA. This is another example of the brilliance of the unionist parties and the incompetence of the nationalist parties when it comes to these matters. At no point in the process in which the new wards and new DEA’s were devised did the nationalist parties introduce legislation or insist that the new wards and DEA’s have equal numbers of voters.
The demographics and predicted election results are based on the 2011 turnout.
The Court DEA will be the most interesting and unpredictable. The unionist parties automatically lose 1 councilor since the current 5 wards were reconfigured into 4 wards due to population loss in the previous 20 years. The loss could be 2 councilors if only 3 are elected. It would require a total nationalist vote of 42.9% for 3 quotas and the demographics indicate a nationalist vote of between 38% and 39%. However, in 2011 the nationalist turnout was 53% in the Lower Falls wards and the unionist turnout only 42% in the Court wards. Furthermore, the nationalist turnout in the Court DEA was only 18%. This was probably not due to true voter apathy. Rather, the nationalist voters stayed home because they knew there was no hope of electing a nationalist candidate in the Court DEA. Will these Court nationalist voters vote in 2014 now that there could be up to 3 nationalist candidates elected? Here I present some more detailed data on the new Court wards:
In the 5 wards of the current Court DEA the Protestant population declined 10% over 10 years, a 1% yearly decline. The Catholic population increased 5% over 10 years, a 0.5% yearly increase. The total Catholic population in Court for 2001 was 1120 and this doubled to 2256 in 2011. In 2001, most of the Catholic population in Court lived in enclaves bordering Lower Falls and Legoniel. In 2011, half of the Catholic population is in those enclaves and the other half are diffusely dispersed. One census OA in Crumlin had a Catholic population of 1% in 2001 and it was 30% in 2011. Interestingly, there was also an increase in the Protestant population in Clonard and Falls though some of that increase is due to ethnic nationals who are Protestant. Based on the election results and turnout in 2011 the results for the new Court DEA would be:
SF 31% SDLP 7% Nationalist 3% Alliance 1% UUP 4% DUP 41% Unionist 13%
With a combined unionist vote of 58% and a combined nationalist vote of 41% it appears that there would be 4 unionist councilors elected. However, there are numerous factors that will affect the 2014 election results such as:
#1 What influence will the flag protests have on unionist turnout in 2014? If turnout goes up the unionist percentage will increase.
#2 Will the prospect of a 3rd nationalist seat increase nationalist turnout among nationalist voters in both the current Court wards and the Lower Falls wards? If the Lower Falls wards turnout returns to 2005 levels there would be an additional 700 nationalist voters. In the old Court DEA wards only 300 of 1800 potential nationalist voters voted in 2011. With the prospect of a 3rd nationalist seat there would be an additional 600 nationalist voters if turnout increased to 50% from these wards.
#3 How will the small Protestant population of Falls and Clonard vote (approximately 500 potential voters of which 200 may vote)? Many may be living with Catholic partners and would probably vote for more moderate parties such as UUP, Alliance and SDLP.
#4 How will the transfer pattern work out? In 2011, 1% of the 3% dissident republican vote did not transfer to SF or the SDLP. It is also likely that little of the Alliance vote will transfer to the DUP or PUP. Since the UUP may be eliminated, how much of their 4% will not transfer to the DUP or PUP or transfer to the SDLP? Some NI21 votes may also transfer to the SDLP.
#5 What will be the effect of the demographic changes since 2011? The trends suggest a further 2% decline in the Protestant electorate which would blunt any effect from increased turnout. The current Court DEA wards may have increased by another 200 to 300 Catholic voters.
#6 As noted above, the failure of the nationalist parties to obtain DEA’s with equal number of voters may have resulted in the loss of a potential nationalist seat. The Court DEA should have an additional 438 voters, all of whom would have been nationalist voters from expanding the DEA further into Beechmount ward. If this had occurred the nationalist vote in 2011 would have been 42% and the unionist 57% with 1% Alliance. Only after May 22nd will we know if this would have been crucial.
SF are guaranteed 2 seats here and the DUP are guaranteed 3 seats. The 6th seat will be won by either the SDLP or the DUP, PUP, TUV or UUP. The SDLP candidate could be elected with the help of transfers from the SF surplus, independent nationalists, Alliance, NI21 and UUP. As in the Oldpark, the refusal of dissident republican voters to transfer to the SDLP or SF could result in the election of the PUP or DUP candidate. It would be ironic if this unwillingness to transfer to the SDLP and SF results in the failure of obtaining a nationalist majority on Belfast council.
The Black Mountain DEA is likely to elect the Eirigi candidate, as well as 5 SF and 1 SDLP. In 2011 Eirigi received 11.3% of the vote, far short of the 16.7% quota. However, this new DEA has a quota of only 12.5%. In 2011, Eirigi received an additional 0.5% in transfers. Furthermore, the boundary changes are favourable for Eirigi since Ladybrook ward was removed and the Upper Springfield and Whiterock wards and most of Beechmount ward were added. In these 3 wards there was a strong vote for Eirigi, Workers Party, Socialist Party and People Before Profit Alliance. During the boundary review, there was a proposal to transfer Beechmount ward to Court, which would have resulted in a 3rd SF seat in Court DEA. SF opposed this move which would also have made Black Mountain a 6 ward DEA with a higher quota of 14.3%. Eirigi would find it difficult to reach 14.3%. Whether this was another poorly thought out strategy by SF will not be known until after the election. If Eirigi only polls 10%, the ward transfer would be of no consequence. If Eirigi polls 14.3%, the ward transfer would also be of no consequence. If Eirigi polls 12.5%, then SF may have gifted a seat to Eirigi. Eirigi will also benefit from transfers from the Workers Party and People Before Profit Alliance candidates in Black Mountain. In the 2011 Lowers Falls election, 20% of transferred votes from those parties went to Eirigi.
The Collin DEA should elect 5 SF and 1 SDLP. I estimate the SF vote at 72%, which are 5 quotas. The SDLP vote would be 18% with 10% Alliance-UUP-NI21. If the SDLP vote increased to over 20% there would be the possibility of electing 2, depending on the balancing of SF candidates and transfers from Alliance, UUP and NI21 voters. Eirigi could prevent SF from winning 5 seats. They will take 1st preference votes from SF and some of these voters may not transfer back to SF.
charlie said:
Faha, maybe your analysis includes this but I thought it would be worth pointing out in ypur list of factors that a huge contributor to the nationalist population of the Dales moving into the area. This makes the Forth river (glencairn) ward around 23% Catholic now. It will be very close. Also the new falls ward is actually more homogeneous as the output area moved to botanic is the most diverse.
It will certainly be close though.
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Faha said:
Today is the last day to register to vote for the May 22 election. The electoral office also released today the new electoral register updated to the end of April. In the previous 3 months there have been 3,700 people added to the register, or 2% of the 170,000+ currently not on the register. 46 new voters in the 4 unionist wards of Court and 25 voters in the 2 nationalist wards. At least among those not on the electoral register, there is much political apathy. Despite all the efforts of the unionist parties to register more voters, the effect has been minimal. The results for the nationalist parties are no better.
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Fear Feirsteach said:
“This is another example of the brilliance of the unionist parties and the incompetence of the nationalist parties when it comes to these matters.”
It’s because the ward boundaries were determined several years ago – simple as.
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Faha said:
FF,
The ward boundaries should have been based on the new December 2013 electorate with equal numbers of voters. You mentioned this several times last year. The SDLP and SF missed out on this completely and of course the unionist parties were quiet about this because it would be to their disadvantage to have wards with equal numbers of voters.
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Fear Feirsteach said:
The work on the wards was done years ago. The problem was the hold up in implementing them. Any attempt to rejig the wards at this late stage would merely hold up (overdue) elections for another couple of years. A review will happen at some point anyway.
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Fear Feirsteach said:
With regard to that output area in Crumlin ward whch has seen a big rise in Catholic population this is beacuse of the new housing on edge of Ardoyne / Marrowbone at Hillview Road. I saw a piece in the Irish News where residents were (rightfully) complaining that they’d been assigned a polling-station in the loyalist area across the Crumlin Road.
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charlie said:
Faha,
I deliberately didn’t mention Crumlin as I knew that although there was some change there, it was mostly at the lower old park end which has been pushed into the adjoining DEA. The glencairn ward however was seriously short of electors and has taken a massive chunk of voters from old park. It means it doubles the number of Catholic majority output areas in the ward and also brings in some more mixed ones. Interested by your point of people in mountainview and Springfield parade now coming out more to vote. Wouldn’t they have had the assembly elextion as a good reason to vote?
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Faha said:
Charlie,
I was surprised that the nationalist voters in Court did not come out to vote in the Assembly. This occurred in several other areas too. The only reason that Joe Boyle of the SDLP did not win in Strangford was due to the less than 25% nationalist turnout in Newtownards and Comber where there also was no hope of electing a nationalist councilor. Similar story in the DEA’s of East Antrim extending from Larne Lough to Carrickfergus. Apparently for many nationalist voters the local council election is more important than the Assembly election.
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westy said:
“Eirigi will also benefit from transfers from the Workers Party and People Before Profit Alliance candidates in Black Mountain. In the 2011 Lowers Falls election, 20% of transferred votes from those parties went to Eirigi.”
Except People Before Profit didnt stand in the local election that year. They stood for Assembly, receiving 1,661 votes, and the Westminster by election with 1751 votes. These were relatively impressive results and the question is will they hold up in the local election.
Therefore the the Eirigi voting figure and the People Before Profit figures are un tested. I would think that PBP would at least eat into a chunk of that eirigi vote given their past performance.
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sammymcnally said:
Faha,
What is the running total of possible Nat gains so far (2 WB + 1NB) = 3?
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Faha said:
+1 SDLP in Castle and +1 SF in Court. SF will have 2 in Court but Court was expanded from a 5 ward DEA to a 6 ward DEA so the 2nd SF seat is only because of the extra ward added.
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Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn) said:
Surprised at the prediction of an éirígí seat though it would be welcome in terms of Republican diversity. Will be keeping an eye on that one 😉
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carrickally said:
SoS, does that mean republican diversity in terms of past and present support for those who kill their own neighbours in the West Belfast area? Or does it mean a return of Gerry’s favourite mantra of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter?
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Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn) said:
I’m not sure how to answer that since I’m not sure the intent of the question? It means Republican diversity in terms of parties representing a broad swath of Republican views, from SF to who knows what. If you want to debate what qualifies as a “Republican”, yes, that would be a fair debate to have. As far as I know éirígí remain committed to non-militarism despite some recent controversies (the arrests, etc.). As for those who argue against the present arrangements at Stormont better to have them involved and active in politics than not. Voices heard are not voices loss to more direct ways of expressing opposition.
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sammymcnally said:
Séamas,
re. ‘éirígí ‘ – I’m not sure that their declaration of peaceful intent is the full story.
Like any ‘fringe’ group (republican or loyalist) they choose their words carefully and obviously need to stay on the right side of the law – the language they use dos suggest some sympathy with those who would like to change the current arrangements in the North by violence.
I’m not saying that is a hanging offence just that there is seems to be some ambivalence to violence or ambivalence to those who are involved in it.
Perhaps I’m misrepresenting their position as you understand it?
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Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn) said:
I know a few supporters and yes there is a revolutionary edge to éirígí, inevitably so given the politics. However recent controversies seem to have been the exception rather than the rule. Claims that the party has developed a “militant tendency” are rather overblown. Though one does hear of tensions.
On the use of “violence” I suspect the party view is as follows: Irish people have the right to resist the historic colonial occupation of their island nation or their communities by military force. However that right is limited by circumstances especially when non-military means exist to pursue the same objective. Only when such means have failed or circumstances dictate otherwise may military force be used. Something like that.
I’m sure éirígí people could present it better.
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Feckitt said:
Hi Bangordub,
Is it possible to do a thread about the independents standing in the council election. It will be impossible to do proper demographic number crunching if we do not know where the independents are getting their votes from. The BBC have a good link on their website to every candidate standing in the election broken down by DEA.
In my own area of Newry & Mourne and Down,
Finbarr Lambe – Crotlieve – Don’t know anything about him.
Jarlath John Tinnelly – Crotlieve – Catholic Letsgetalongerist.
Cadogan Enright – Downpatrick – Ex Green Party Letsgetalongerist
Davy Hyland – Newry – Ex Sinn Fein Republican
James Malone – Newry – Last time he got 10 votes lol. Letsgetalongerist?
Mickey Coogan – Rowallane – Ex Sinn Fein Republican
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bangordub said:
That’s a good idea. Thank you. I’m doing an interesting SF interview next week but am open to doing interviews with any and all candidates, particularly independents. If any of the above want a platform with a few tricky questions thrown in, I’m more than happy to do what I can
Regarding the thread idea I am planning an interview with wn independent in ND shortly which may be a good opportunity to open a discussion on the subject
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Enda said:
Ask SF rep why they are not vocak about transferring to the SDLP?
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tmill1983 said:
Eirigi got nowhere and PBP got elected, 2nd on first preference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/23_05_14_black_mountain.pdf
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