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| DUP | V/UUUP | UUP | U(P)/UPNI | Oth U | Alliance | Lab | Comm | WP/RC | SDLP | |
| 82a | 28.2%*** | 0.5% | 41.1%**** | 2.7% | 11.6%** | 0.8% | 2.5% | 12.3%* | ||
| 79w | 69.0% | 16.2% | 2.6% | 2.2% | 10.1% | |||||
| 75cc | 25.1%** | 10.9%** | 23.7%* | 14.0%* | 12.4%* | 0.4% | 1.0% | 12.6%* | ||
| 74wo | 71.5% | 15.3% | 13.2% | |||||||
| 74wf | 67.6% | 17.6% | 2.5% | 12.3% | ||||||
| 73a | 19.1%* | 11.1%* | 14.2%* | 17.4%** | 12.0%* | 12.3%* | 3.3% | 10.5%* |
| James Molyneaux MP (UUP) 19,978 *William Beattie (DUP) 7,489 Ivan Davis (DUP) 5,394 Fraser Agnew (UUP) 3,302 Seamus Close (Alliance) 2,916 John Clenaghan (SDLP) 2,802 Gordon Mawhinney (Alliance) 2,660 Roy Thompson (DUP) 2,646 Joan Tomlin (Alliance) 2,107 Patrick Ritchie (SDLP) 2,081 James McDonald (SDLP) 2,071 George Herron (Ind U) 1,797 Clifford Forsythe (UUP) 1,612 Trevor Kirkland (DUP) 1,265 Samuel Neill (DUP) 1,250 Billy McDonnell (Ind SDLP) 1,180 William Bell (UUP) 979 Ivan Hunter (UUP) 930 Kevin Smyth (WP) 891 Austin Kelly (WP) 775 James Smith (Ind DUP) 686 Bob Kidd (Lab) 560 Frank Millar jr (UUP) 526 Andrew Gibb (Communist) 247 *Kennedy Lindsay (UUUP) 160 Samuel Larmour (UUUP) 139 |
Votes by party: UUP 27,327 (41.1%) 4 seats (4.5 quotas) DUP 18,044 (27.2%) 3 seats (3.0 quotas) Alliance 7,683 (11.6%) 2 seats (1.3 quotas) SDLP 6,954 (10.5%) 1 seat (1.2 quotas) Ind U 1,797 (2.7%, 0.3 quotas) WP 1,666 (2.5%, 0.3 quotas) Ind SDLP 1,180 (1.8%, 0.2 quotas) Ind DUP 686 (1,0%, 0.1 quotas) Lab 560 (0.8%, 0.1 quotas) UUUP 299 (0.5%, 0.05 quotas) Communist 247 (0.4%, 0.04 quotas) Electorate: 131,734 |
* Elected to the 1975 Constitutional Convention
Gibb ran as the candidate of the Communist Party of Ireland, and Kidd as "Newtownabbey Labour"; I have abbreviated these in the table above.
James Knight described this election as "near, if not above, the upper limit of practicality for a public single transferable vote election", with 26 candidates chasing ten places. The entire count took about 42 hours, and the only STV election I know of which was of greater complexity was the Irish Free State's Senate election of 1925.
Only two of those elected to the Convention in 1975 stood and only one of them was elected, the other finishing second last (though he was eliminated third as he overtook the Communist candidate on transfers). With two extra seats allocated to the constituency, and the disappearance of two parties which had won three seats in 1975, comparisons are difficult, but it could be broadly said that the DUP picked up one of the Vanguard seats, the UUP got the other Vanguard seat as well as the UPNI seat and one of the new seats, and Alliance got the other new seat.
The results followed the first preferences, with Alliance's Gordon Mawhinney finishing on 5100 votes to 4651 for Frank Millar jr of the UUP. (Millar was subsequently elected to the Assembly in a by-election for South Belfast. His father was also elected from North Belfast. ) The 449 votes between Mawhinney and Millar were however not in fact the decisive margin. That had come a couple of counts earlier, when only 98 votes separated the SDLP's Clenaghan and Alliance's Close at the bottom of the pile. If the positions had been reversed, and Close been eliminated at that point, his votes would certainly have split more evenly than Clenaghan's votes, quite possibly enough to elect Millar of the UUP rather than the second SDLP candidate.
UUP majority: 38,868; Electorate: 126,493; Turnout 58.8%
A good result for Molyneaux which gave him the highest majority of any MP in the UK. Kidd's United Labour Party had been founded by Paddy Devlin in 1978.
| *William Beattie (DUP-UUUC) 11,834 *Austin Ardill (UUP-UUUC) 10,895 *Vincent McCloskey (SDLP) 6,756 *Anne Dickson (UPNI) 5,723 Charles Kinahan (Alliance) 5,294 *Kennedy Lindsay (VUP-UUUC) 4,529 *Peter McLachlan (UPNI) 3,919 John Cousins (Alliance) 3,228 George Morrison (VUP-UUUC) 2,943 James Smith (DUP-UUUC) 2,970 Samuel Semple (UUP-UUUC) 2,813 John Logan (UUP-UUUC) 2,595 Stewart Dunlop (DUP-UUUC) 2,461 James McDonald (SDLP) 1,888 Kevin Smith (Rep Clubs) 710 William Somerset (Communist) 248 |
Vote by party: [UUUC got 41,040 votes (59.6%) and won 5 seats (5.4 quotas)] DUP 17265 (25.1%) 2 seats (2.3 quotas) UUP 16303 (23.7%) 1 seat (2.1 quotas) UPNI 9642 (14.0%) 1 seat (1.3 quotas) SDLP 8644 (12.6%) 1 seat (1.1 quotas) Alliance 8522 (12.4%) 1 seat (1.1 quotas) Vanguard 7472 (10.9%) 2 seats (1.0 quotas) Rep Clubs 710 (1.0%, 0.1 quotas) Communist 248 (0.4%, 0.03 quotas) Electorate: 119,723 |
* member of the 1973 Assembly
Compared with 1973, Vanguard and the DUP gained both the two pro-White Paper UUP seats, and Anne Dickson kept her seat under a different party label. While both Ardill and Beattie did very well on the first count, both found their transfers leaking to their coalition partners rather than their running mates; to such an extent that Vanguard got two seats on less than one quota of first preferences. The two Vanguard candidates were the last two elected, both over the 7646 quota, with Lindsay finishing on 7967 and Morrison on 7724 to Peter MacLachlan's 5905 for the UPNI. Lindsay's undistributed surplus would have slightly increased Morrison's already substantial winning margin.
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP - UUUC) majority: 38,432; Electorate: 118,483; Turnout 58.0%
* sitting MP
Molyneaux consolidated his already strong position.
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP - UUUC) majority: 35,644; Electorate: 116,710; Turnout 61.5%
* sitting MP
A strong performance by Molyneaux.
| *William Beattie (DUP) 10,126 *Anne Dickson (Ind U) 9,033 Edward McCloskey (SDLP) 7,899 Derrick Crothers (Alliance) 5,975 *Nat Minford (UUP, pro-White Paper) 5,289 Austin Ardill (UUP, anti-White Paper) 5,234 Allen Annesley (DUP) 4,232 Peter McLachlan (UUP, pro-White Paper) 3,983 George Swann (UUP, pro-White Paper) 3,742 Kennedy Lindsay (Vanguard) 3,005 William Snoddy (Vanguard) 2,706 Robert Bradford (Vanguard) 2,587 John Blakeley (UUP, anti-White Paper) 2,375 Alexander McGowan (UUP, anti-White Paper) 2,327 William Gawn (Alliance) 1,709 Joan Tomlin (Alliance) 1,572 Sandy Scott (NILP) 854 Bob Kidd (NILP) 740 William King (UUP, anti-White Paper) 694 Deirdre Byrne (NILP) 559 Robert Johnston (NILP) 342 |
Votes by party: [UUP got 23,644 votes (31.5%) and won 3 seats (2.8 quotas)] DUP 14,358 (19.1%) 1 seat (1.7 quotas) UUP (pro) 13,014 (17.4%) 2 seats (1.6 quotas) UUP (anti) 10,630 (14.2%) 1 seat (1.3 quotas) Alliance 9,256 (12.3%) 1 seat (1.1 quotas) Ind U 9,033 (12.0%) 1 seat (1.1 quotas) Vanguard 8,298 (11.1%) 1 seat (1.0 quotas) SDLP 7,899 (10.5%) 1 seat (0.9 quotas) NILP 2,495 (3.3%, 0.3 quotas) Electorate: 114,240 |
* Member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons when it was dissolved.
In addition to the three candidates who had been been Stormont MPs in 1972, Austin Ardill had represented the Carrick seat until the 1969 election, when he lost the Unionist nomination to Anne Dickson.
Beattie's surplus largely went to his DUP colleague Annesley, but it was not enough; the pro-White Paper UUP McLachlan proved to be able to pull transfers in from other parties, and finished on 7997 votes to Annesley's 6663.
Austin Ardill is listed by both Walker and Knight as anti-White Paper; he had however signed Faulkner's pledge and so is listed by Flackes and Elliott as pro, with a mention by Bew and Gillespie that he changed sides after the election from pro to anti. I have tallied him as anti.
Minford was elected Speaker of the Assembly.
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.
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Disclaimer:© Nicholas Whyte 1998-2004 Last
Updated on
Tuesday, November 08,
2005 22:39:22
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