DUP leader is confused when he says that splits have cost unionism Stormont seats

Sir Jeffery Donaldson, in his address to the DUP conference, seems to have promoted what might be described as the Four Quotas Fallacy (News Letter story: ‘Splintered unionism cost seats at Stormont,’ says party leader, Oct 10).

He argued that the combined first preference vote given to unionist parties in certain constituencies was equivalent to four quotas.

He sees the failure to win four unionist seats as baffling, until he produces a scapegoat. “It wasn’t nationalists or others who caused the loss of several pro-Union seats at the election”, he claims.

He blames “splinters and divisions within the Pro-Union family” and makes the startling claim that it is possible to split the vote in a PR election, without explaining how.

Sir Jeffery seems to have got confused. The quota in our form of PR is calculated by dividing a constituency’s turnout by the number of seats plus one (giving us six) and then adding one vote.

The total number of ballots cast is therefore just slightly short of six quotas. It is quite possible for the combined unionist first preference vote to be around four quotas and for the non-unionist vote to be around two quotas. But only five MLAs can be elected.

Under Sir Jeffery’s argument both sides would be gobsmacked that they did not return four and two MLAs respectively. But that is illogical. Where the initial unionist and non-unionist quotas are divided in the ratio 4:2, it simply means there will be hard fight for the fifth seat. Unionism needs well in excess of four initial quotas to have high hopes of four seats.

Let us take the example of East Antrim, a constituency which Sir Jeffery named. The official Electoral Office statistics show that the combined Unionist vote initially amounted to 3.8 quotas and the non-unionist vote was 2.2 quotas. That made the non-unionists favourites to take the fifth seat, which they did. The two Alliance candidates, who initially had just 1.4 quotas between them, both met the quota with the help of over 1,100 transfers from the SDLP and the Green Party, and over 2600 transfers from Sinn Fein.

But we must also recognise a phenomenon which might be called the Temporary Unionist. We need to take account of those Ulster Unionist voters who transfer to Alliance. For instance, when the last UUP candidate, John Stewart, was declared elected in East Antrim, 35% of his surplus went to Alliance.

These Temporary Unionists, after their defection, would have reduced the combined unionist vote to 3.6 quotas and the non-unionist vote correspondingly increased to 2.4 quotas. It was therefore no surprise that Alliance won two seats and unionists only three.

No unionist parties were to blame here for putting up candidates. Perhaps Sir Jeffery will stop promoting the Four Quotas Fallacy when he has become less confused.

Paul Kingsley, Belfast BT4