Letter: Far from costing unionist seats, TUV transfers helped to elect DUP MLAs

Quoted in the article yesterday (‘DUP hits back at Allister and misleading FT report,’ March 28, see link below) Phillip Brett seems to be confused about how the Single Transferable Vote system works.

He repeats the fallacy that because the combined unionist vote in last May’s Stormont election was roughly equivalent to four quotas in certain assembly seats, unionism should have won four seats. Sorry, Phillip, but you have overlooked the fact that the quota is calculated by dividing the turnout by six, not five, so there are six quotas (all bar one vote) on offer. In Strangford, unionists had 3.8 quotas in 2022, but non-unionists had well over two quotas.

You see, Phillip, that made them the favourites to win two out of the five seats, especially as the Alliance Party received over 2,000 transfers from the SDLP.

Perhaps you did not notice that the Alliance vote went up from 15% to 24% in Strangford since the previous assembly election. At the same time, the combined unionist first preference vote fell from 71% to 63%. It tends to make a difference. Nothing to do with splitting or splintering the unionist vote.

The same phenomenon can be seen in other constituencies. The record shows that many DUP MLAs were elected on TUV transfers, but they do not seem to be grateful.

Back to the Maths classroom for the DUP.

Dr Paul Kingsley, Belfast BT4

DUP hits back at Allister and misleading FT report