Letter: It is misleading to compare the vote of all unionist parties to that of one nationalist party
Reply to Tom Carew (‘Unionist bloc bigger than republicans,’ May 22, scroll down for link). Tom proceeds to count every unionist party vote and vote share and then compares it to the vote share of one party on the nationalist voting block. This is misleading. Not counting Alliance, independents, PBP, or the Green Party and only including those actually elected. The vote share and percentages are as follows.
Unionist bloc vote share
DUP 173,033 23.3%
UUP 81,282 10.9%
TUV 29,202 3.9%
PUP 2,103 0.4%
Total 285,620 38.5%
Nationalist bloc vote share
Sinn Féin 230,793 30.9%
SDLP 64,996 8.7%
Total 295,789 39.6%
In the writer's own words I also ask: ''So are those in media who now highlight the latest SF result in isolation, not really distorting the broader picture?''. If you are counting all unionist vote share v one nationalist party vote share, then you too are distorting the picture.
Mary Russell, Dundalk, Co Louth