Ben Lowry: The DUP is now dominant to an extent it has never been before

The DUP is now in the political driving seat to an extent that it has never been before.
Votes are sorted at the Valley Leisure Centre election countVotes are sorted at the Valley Leisure Centre election count
Votes are sorted at the Valley Leisure Centre election count

The party has increased its lead at Stormont a mere 12 months after it maintained its dominant position at Westminster with eight seats, despite two Ulster Unionist gains.

Returning with 38 Stormont seats, the DUP is now well clear of Sinn Fein. The margin between the two widened to 10 seats, despite the fears of Sinn Fein emerging as the largest party and clinching the First Minister position.

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Sinn Fein has not even reached the level – 30 seats – where it can launch petitions of concern without assistance from other MLAs.

The seat margin of the DUP over Sinn Fein is much higher than the vote margin – the DUP’s 202,600 vote is 22 per cent bigger than Sinn Fein’s 166,800, but the DUP has 35 per cent more seats.

The reason for this is that the unionist vote advantage over nationalism overall is greater than the DUP advantage over Sinn Fein specifically.

The TUV, Ukip and PUP votes push up the overall unionist vote to more than 330,000, and when candidates from those smaller parties are eliminated their transfers end up mostly going to the UUP or DUP.

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Votes for Alliance and even Greens are probably more likely to transfer to unionist parties than to Sinn Fein, albeit ultimately.

While both those parties draw support from voters of Catholic, Protestant and neither backgrounds, they are at their strongest in constituencies around Belfast that are predominantly made up of voters from a Protestant background, such as North Down and East Belfast.

The narrow results in many constituencies showed how important it is for voters to express preferences well down their ballot box if they want their votes to have influence in later counts.

It is unclear the extent to which the shrinking ‘green’ vote (250,000 this time) is due to nationalists temporarily staying away from the polls or is part of a longer term diminished appetite for Irish unity.

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Even if People Before Profit, which was only big in nationalist areas, is added to the SDLP-SF total the nationalist vote is still notably down.

Independents and candidates from smaller parties actually polled well last Thursday, showing that there was some of the anti-incumbency vote that has swept so much of the western world.

Of the five main parties, the SDLP is being cited as the party that had the worst election. But in some respects the UUP are in a worse position.

The SDLP got almost exactly one third of the combined SDLP-SF vote, whereas the UUP got only 30 per cent of the combined UUP-DUP vote. If clearly ‘unionist’ candidates are added into the mix, the UUP share of the ‘Orange’ total is even lower at around 26 per cent.

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In any event, its overall first preference vote was a mere 4,000 ahead of the SDLP’s disappointing total.

There is now a significant problem for the UUP: the DUP seems to be emerging, perhaps subconsciously, as the governing party in the minds of unionist voters and it is getting droves of moderate votes in addition to its traditional hardline vote, that has not significantly defected to the TUV.

It might be that the UUP continues to do its best in what might come to be seen as the forum for protest votes – council and Westminster elections.

If so, this makes the UUP dilemma of whether or not to go into opposition all the greater. That role could exacerbate any sense of the DUP as the ruling party.

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Some people within the Ulster Unionists will be pushing for further unity with the DUP and perhaps even a merger, but that option will be bitterly resisted by others and in any event a single party would clearly now only come about largely on the DUP’s terms.

Meanwhile, social conservatives are already interpreting the DUP vote as a rejection of social liberalism. I think this is a misreading of the trend, and that surveys have shown that increasing numbers even of DUP voters are now liberal on matters such as abortion or same-sex rights.

But even if that assessment is correct, these are socially liberal voters who are not put off by the DUP’s almost universally traditional stance on such matters so it is not as important to such voters as things such as the Union, governing ability and who holds the First Minister position.

The DUP will have a minor problem if Alliance and the Ulster Unionists choose to go into opposition: it will need to fill extra extra ministerial seats, and while a handful of its young MLAs are able – such as Simon Hamilton, Emma Little Pengelly and Peter Weir – it has also lost a tranche of its talent and experience to Westminster now that double jobbing has been prohibited.

If the party ends up with, for example, justice or health or education, it will need talented and bold ministers who can field some of the huge challenges in those departments.