Assembly election, 20 October 1982 (eight seats)

* Elected to the 1975 Constitutional Convention

With an extra seat awarded to the constituency, the DUP picked up one and the UUP two compared with 1975. Neither of the two Vanguard candidates who had won seats in the Convention stood again. The runner-up, Charles Brown of the UUP, finished on 4,885 votes, far behind Cecil Cousley of the DUP who had 6,835.

Westminster Election, 3 May 1979 (one seat)

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) majority: 18,543; Electorate: 102,224; Turnout: 62.6%

Another storming result for Paisley, but the UUP must also have been cheered by taking almost a third of his vote - after their dismal results from a few years before. Yet another seat where the IIP failed to make the breakthrough despite a high-level defection from the SDLP. Turnly was assassinated by the UDA in June 1980.

Constitutional Convention election, 1 May 1975 (seven seats)

* member of the 1973 Assembly (Smyth had been elected in a by-election after the Assembly was prorogued)

The DUP had over four quotas, but only three candidates, who were thus all safely elected. They and Vanguard gained a seat each from the UUP as compared with 1973; Vanguard won two seats here despite having less than two thirds of a single quota on first preferences. It was a close thing though as David Allen of Vanguard was only 48 votes ahead of Adam Erwin of the UUP on the final count, 6114 votes to 6066.

Westminster election, 10 October 1974 (one seat)

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP - UUUC) majority: 34,497; Electorate: 103,763; Turnout: 57.7%

* sitting MP
@ member of Assembly (which by this time had been prorogued).

A pretty comprehensive victory for Paisley, though interesting to note that Alliance swept up a fair number of votes from both pro-Assembly Unionists and SDLP compared with the elections held earlier in the year.

Assembly by-election, 20 June 1974 (one seat)

Electorate: 104,168
Percentage turnout: 46.7
Quota: 24,069

The by-election was caused by the death in a car accident of David McCarthy, a pro-Assembly member of the UUP, on 15 July 1973. By the time the election took place the Assembly had already been prorogued due to the collapse of the power-sharing executive. Clifford Smyth, the DUP candidate and runner-up in the 1973 election, won on the first count. He later left the DUP (and was a UUP candidate in the 1979 Westminster election in North Down) and wrote a not especially fulsome biography of Ian Paisley.

Westminster Election, 28 February 1974 (one seat)

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP - UUUC) majority: 27,631; Electorate: 103,763; Turnout: 57.7%

* sitting MP
@ Member of Assembly

This was not one of the seats where a split in the pro-Agreement vote let in the UUUC. Utley's vote, though not much down on the UUP vote in the Assembly elections, in fact turned out to be largely on loan from Alliance and SDLP..

Assembly election, 28 June 1973 (seven seats)

* Member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons when it was dissolved.

Three of the four Stormont MPs who had represented parts of North Antrim were candidates here. Exactly a thousand votes separated runner-up Clifford Smyth from his fellow DUP candidate James Craig, 6829 to 7829. Baxter became Minister for Information in the power-sharing Executive.

Samuel Steele is listed by Brian Walker as a pro-White paper candidate, but by James Knight as an anti. I have tallied him as an anti.

See also:

Results from 1973 to 1982 for each seat: East Belfast | North Belfast | South Belfast | West Belfast | North Antrim | South Antrim | Armagh | North Down | South Down | Fermanagh and South Tyrone | Londonderry | Mid Ulster

Other sites based at ARK: ORB (Online Research Bank) | CAIN (Conflict Archive on the INternet) | Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey

Your comments, please! Send an email to me at nicholas.whyte@gmail.com.

Nicholas Whyte, 25 March 2003.