The 2010 Westminster elections in Northern Ireland

The Elections

The 6 May 2010 general election delivered the first hung parliament since 1974, with the Conservatives the largest party but (at time of writing) no clear indication of who would form the next government. In Northern Ireland, the results were much less dramatic, with two seats changing hands. One of these was in fact a retention of the North Down seat by the sitting MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, after she parted company with the UUP and stood as an independent; the other, much more dramatically, was the victory of the Alliance Party in East Belfast, defeating Northern Ireland's First Minister, Peter Robinson. Sinn Fein held their seat in Fermanagh and South Tyrone by a mere four votes.

East Antrim East Antrim East Belfast East Belfast East Londonderry Foyle Foyle Fermanagh & South Tyrone Lagan Valley Mid-Ulster North Antrim North Antrim Newry & Armagh North Belfast North Belfast North Down North Down South Antrim South Belfast South Belfast South Down Strangford Upper Bann West Belfast West Belfast West Tyrone
This map by Conal Kelly shows the winner in each constituency in 2010.

The Results

The details of each seat are on the relevant page; the totals for the whole of Northern Ireland were as follows (see spreadsheet archive):
 
Party Votes Share Seats won
SF 171,942 25.5% 5 MPs (West Belfast, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Mid Ulster, Newry and Armagh, and West Tyrone)
DUP 168,216 25.0% 8 MPs (North Belfast, East Antrim, North Antrim, South Antrim, Lagan Valley, East Londonderry, Strangford and Upper Bann)
SDLP 110,970 16.5% 3 MPs (South Belfast, South Down and Foyle)
UCUNF 102,631 15.2%    
Alliance 42,762 6.3% 1 MP (East Belfast)
Traditional Unionist Voice 26,300 3.9%
Rodney Connor 21,300 3.2%

Lady Sylvia Hermon 21,181 3.1% 1 MP (North Down)
Green Party 3,542 0.5%

People Before Profit 2,936 0.4%
William Frazer 656 0.1%

Lyle Cubitt 606 0.1%

Ciaran McClean 508 0.1%

Martin McAuley 403 0.1%

John Stevenson 188 0.03%    

Notes

UCUNF is an abbreviation for "Ulster Conservatives and Unionists: New Force", the banner under which the UUP and Conservatives jointly fought the election. Of their 102,631 (15.2%) vote share, 90,910 (13.5%) went to UUP candidates and 11,451 (1.7%) to Conservative candidates.
Connor was an independent candidate running with support of all the Unionist parties in Fermanagh and South tyrone. He came within six votes of winning the seat.
Hermon had been elected as the UUP MP for North Down in 2001 and 2005. She left the party in 2010, and contested and won the seat again as an independent in this election.
People Before Profit had only one candidate, veteran campaigner Eamonn McCann, in Foyle.
Frazer is an independent Loyalist who has stood in several recent elections; here he was a candidate in Newry and Armagh.
Cubitt slightly oddly stood with a blank description on the ballot paper; he had previously been a candidate in North antrim for the UKUP.
McClean campaigned as an independent environmentalist, particularly concerned about quarrying in West Tyrone.
McAuley, aged 19, was the youngest candidate in Northern Ireland in this election.
Stevenson was a first-time candidate whose platform included opposition to factory closures in Fermanagh aand South Tyrone, and "even and fair distribution of all public servants pay to negate the budget deficit".

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, 8 May 2010.

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Disclaimer:© Nicholas Whyte 2005 Last Updated on Sunday, 09-May-2010 21:59