Ben Lowry: Council election results so far seem to heighten the challenge facing unionism on how to go forward

It will not be the final number of councillors. As of last night more than 60% of the 462 such seats had been decided. But the number that will matter is the first preference votes cast. This is not important just due to it highlighting voter’s attitudes the constitutional question, although it is primarily of course important for that reason. But the first preference votes will also tell us what is happening within the two main communities, and how they are shaping up with regard to the non aligned political centre.

Last night the total number of votes cast was fluctuating, as it will continue to fluctuate today. Sinn Fein was mostly over 30%, which if that is continued will be its best ever share of the overall vote. The DUP was in the mid 20s %, and Alliance was around 12%. The UUP was a bit below that, the SDLP was under 10% and the TUV was around 4%. With many electoral area ballot boxes not having even been opened, those figures will certainly change. But we have enough information to work with to form outline conclusions.

As expected the DUP and Sinn Fein have consolidated their position, and Alliance have seen their vote rise. As expected the Ulster Unionists and SDLP have been squeezed, and the TUV has failed to repeat its Stormont success of last year, when it reached almost 8% of the vote (but failed to win a second seat, to accompany the re-elected party leader Jim Allister). However, the most striking apparent trend from these council elections (barring a sudden reversal in fortunes today) is that the SDLP has been squeezed much more than the UUP.

This means that while the unionist and nationalist blocks still seem to be quite closely matched, with unionism perhaps still slightly ahead (again we cannot be sure of this but as of last night it seemed that it might be heading for the sort of 2% margin over nationalism that it achieved in the 2022 assembly contest), Sinn Fein is pulling well ahead of the DUP. Why? Because the SDLP is being squeezed more than the UUP.

It is often said that these two parties are on the brink of extinction (scroll down for a link to a UUP member who has just quit for that very reason), but in the coming weeks I hope to write an article challenging this theory. After all, they typically between them get almost 20% of the vote, and their combined vote is always bigger than Alliance. This is a large and hugely influential bunch of people who want to register their strong convictions on the key constitutional and cultural divide (ie to register that they are unionist or nationalist) but who simply will not transfer their allegiances to either Sinn Fein or the DUP.

It is often said that Alliance and non aligned voters will decide the fate of Northern Ireland, and it is true that Alliance voters when added to one of the two main blocks, nationalist or unionist, turn that block into a comfortable majority (scroll down for a link to an analysis of Alliance vote transfers by the veteran number cruncher Sydney Elliott). But the even larger combined UUP-SDLP vote is also one to watch closely.

On the unionist side, I have long been struck by something that the veteran Ulster Unionist Chris McGimpsey once said in an article for us. A single unionist party would merely gift 50,000 votes to Alliance he said. He seemed to be working on the crude, but plausible, logic that around half of the then core vote of 100,000 UUP voters would in the scenario of a single party be repelled by the idea and go Alliance. I think that those of us who care about the Union need to be very mindful of that notion. All the more so given that the UUP vote, while massively reduced from its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, has stood up pretty well in election after election.

There is a huge number of people who consider themselves to be unionist, and want to distinguish themselves from Alliance, but who want almost nothing to do with the paraphernalia of unionism, or with flags, or loyalism or bands or anything like that. Losing such people to Alliance is a problem in the sense that such voters might culturally feel comfortable with Alliance but would almost certainly not agree with the detail of how Alliance votes on policies, such as being neutral on the border, supporting the Irish Sea border in order to keep the Irish land border open, and supporting dilution of sovereignty to give the Irish government greater say over the running of UK territory in the absence of devolution. Yet many such UUP voters, while they might not like such Alliance policies if those policies are spelt out to them, might at the same time be apolitical and unaware of the details.

The point is that unionism, given that it is battling an often subtle war of cultural and constitutional attrition, cannot afford to lose any of the current UUP vote, let alone tens of thousands of them.

In the picture on this page Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP voter, looks pensive. Of course that might be misleading – the photographer might have captured his expression at a fleeting moment when he was concentrating on something and seemed concerned. But he has good reason to be worried. There is no easy path forward for the unionist parties.

In a way, it could be said that the three-way unionist split has helped maximise unionist options – an increasingly liberal UUP, a mainstream DUP, and a (very) traditional TUV. On the other hand, it is not going to work as a long-term option for unionists. The fracturing of unionism means that some votes are lost in transfers, no matter how well organised. And it means that the limited pool of unionist talent is splintered.

Nationalism seems to be rallying round one party, albeit slowly and not entirely. This heightens the unionist dilemma.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor

Michael Palmer: The UUP cannot recover and therefore I am quitting

• Ben Lowry last week: Reflections on being in Westminster Abbey

• Ben Lowry last week: On his impatient Nolan show appearance

• Ben Lowry May 6: It is surprising the monarchy has lasted so long

• Ben Lowry April 29: We do not hear about generous public sector pensions

• Sydney Elliott: Alliance vote transfers suggest centre is moving towards nationalism