Editorial: Many unionist voters seemed to want to give the DUP a kicking

At dawn yesterday it seemed as if unionists had suffered an election disaster.​

There was no shortage of pundits keen to convey that impression. But as the day wore on, it became clearer that the contest had been a disaster for the DUP, as opposed to for unionism.

The party was given a kicking by unionist voters. Why? Well, voters do give kickings as they just did in Great Britain to the Tories. Northern Ireland was immune from such upsets in the Troubles because both sides of the community were reluctant to remove political representatives unless they were confident that the other side would not take the seat.

Latterly NI has moved into a more normal politics of swings. Sinn Fein suffered a mauling from its supporters in the 2019 general election when it shed almost a quarter of its 2017 vote.

Another factor with the DUP is that it has struggled from its own success. Becoming a large party of government has entailed more compromise than some of its base can handle. This reached its peak with its changing and sometimes confused approach to the very idea of an Irish Sea border since Brexit.

This year its claim to have got rid of that barrier annoyed many voters.

Some have been demoralised by the shocking departure of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. Others have preferred the liberal approach of the UUP. And there will be other reasons too.

We warmly congratulate Jim Allister, Robin Swann and Alex Easton and pay tribute to the defeated Ian Paisley Jr, Paul Girvan and Jonathan Buckley.

The overall unionist vote in this election actually pulled ahead of that of nationalists, not that you would know it from broadcasts.

But while the election was perhaps not that bad for unionists, it was by no means good. The three-way split in places was very damaging.

Unionists have much to reflect on in the coming months.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​