Ben Lowry: Analysis of the electoral numbers in North Down, where split unionist vote makes it hard to unseat Stephen Farry of Alliance

The tussle between the unionist candidates, Colonel Tim Collins of the Ulster Unionists and the independent Alex Easton, has played out on these opinion pages.

The former MPs Baroness (Kate) Hoey (click here to read her), Robert McCartney (click here to read) and David Burnside (click here) have all explained their reasons for backing Col Collins, while the DUP peers Lord (Willie) McCrea (click here to read) and Lord (Peter) Weir (click here to read) have done the same for Mr Easton.

The incumbent MP Stephen Farry has been campaigning on why he is best for the seat.

I grew up in North Down and have been following election results there closely since the tightly fought 1987 contest in which Robert McCartney quit the Ulster Unionists to run as an independent against the sitting MP Jim Kilfedder, breaking a post Anglo-Irish Agreement pact between the two key unionist parties, UUP-DUP, not to challenge sitting unionists.

Mr Kilfedder (later Sir James) narrowly kept the seat, then did so again against a similarly strong challenge from the NI Conservatives in 1992. Sir Jim had been MP since 1970, when it was a far larger constituency, stretching out to Hillsborough. He then resigned from the UUP later that decade, claiming that Enoch Powell was dictating party policy.

It was the beginning of a trend in North Down, which is wealthier than any other constituency in Northern Ireland, for independent-minded MPs and unexpected election results.

Robert McCartney finally won North Down on Sir Jim’s sudden death in 1995 and fairly comfortably held the seat in 1997. But he then fell foul of the large support in the constituency for the 1998 Belfast Agreement by not only opposing it, but doing so alongside the DUP.

Alliance stood aside to help the pro agreement Lady (Sylvia) Hermon take the seat in 2001, a sacrifice that cost Alliance dearly for the rest of Lady Hermon’s incumbency. She won easy re-election in 2005, 2010 and 2015. As you can see below, her last election, 2017, was much tighter. No wonder Alex Easton thought he could win two years later, having come so close then.

But there was a political earthquake in 2019, one that is worth looking at closely to understand how unpredictable the seat can be. No-one really knew where Sylvia Hermon’s votes would go. Maybe largely to her old party the UUP? Maybe some to another unionist party, the DUP? Maybe a big chunk to Alliance, which had backed her?

Lady Hermon had followed her two predecessors in quitting UUP in 2010 (in protest at its pact with the Tories). So, like them, she seemed to become someone who reflected North Down’s apparent liking for professionals and people of status (Kilfedder a barrister, McCartney a QC, she a law lecturer and widow of a chief constable). Tim Collins, a former colonel once praised by the then Prince Charles for his eve of battle speech, will hope to chime with such values.

Lady Hermon was also anti Brexit, in tune with many of her constituents.

So last time it was clear that Alliance would rebound from the appalling numbers it got in all elections after lending its support to Hermon in 2001, when Alliance votes stuck with her thereafter. My own estimate was that Stephen Farry would easily get 10,000 votes, notably more than it had ever got since 1983 (when the current constituency took its broad shape – there have been minor changes since then). I thought he would probably get 12,000 plus, but I did not expect Alliance to soar to 18k.

That put Mr Farry on 45% of the vote. If he retains that share or indeed goes up, as incumbents often do due to increased profile, say to 47%, he will win unless one of his opponents gets 90% of the remaining 53% of votes.

Given that Mr Easton, who easily topped the poll in the 2022 Stormont elections, and Col Collins are both expected to get large votes, such an outcome is near impossible. The unionist majority in the seat is now slim: about 55 to 45.

However, with the Greens and SDLP both now standing he might well lose 1,000+ votes to them, in which case it becomes easier, but by no means easy, for one of the unionists to win. If such a dip in the Farry votes is modest, one of the two unionists needs sweep the board on the unionist side to get victory, which both think they can do.

Mr Farry is towards the intellectual end of the political spectrum, which seems to have played well in the seat. But unionists insist his record is far too liberal and woke for the area (click here to read Owen Polley criticising Stephen Farry warning about the threat of a unionist win, and here to read Alan Chambers arguing for Tim Collins) .

It is hard to tell what happened in 2019, which was so different from 2017, see both results below. But here is a crude summary of the movement between those elections which illustrates how votes can shift in the seat:

About 500 2017 Hermon votes went to the DUP in 2019, about 1,000 to the Tories, 5,000 to the UUP, but by far the most, 9,500, to Alliance. About 1,400 new voters also went to Farry, as did 3,500 Green, SDLP and SF votes – as, of course, did the 3,600 2017 Alliance votes.

I have often thought that North Down voters see what they want to see in their MP, such as some voters thinking a particular candidate conservative and others thinking the same person liberal, as I believe happened with Kilfedder, McCartney and Hermon.

​

• Key election data in the constituency, scroll down

•Candidates 2024:

Alliance, Stephen Farry, UUP, Tim Collins, Independent, Alex Easton, Green Barry McKee, SDLP Déirdre Vaughan, Independent Chris Carter

• 2019 election

Alliance, Farry 18,358

DUP, Easton 15,390

UUP, Alan Chambers 4,936

NI Conservatives, Matthew Robinson 1,959

Majority 2,968

• 2017 election

Independent, Hermon 16,148

DUP, Easton 14,940

Alliance, Andrew Muir 3,639

Green, Steven Agnew 2,549

Cons, Frank Shivers 941

SF, Thérèse McCartney 531

SDLP, Caoímhe McNeill 400, Independent Gavan Reynolds 370

Majority1,208