'Towards
a Lasting Peace? The Northern Ireland Multi-Party Agreement, Referendum
and Assembly Elections of 1998
by John Doyle
Table 3 Percentage votes received by each party in 1996 Forum and 1998 Assembly
elections
|
Party
|
Forum
1996
|
Assembly
1998
|
|
UUP
|
24.17
|
21.23
|
|
SDLP
|
21.37
|
21.99
|
|
DUP
|
18.8
|
18.03
|
|
SF
|
15.47
|
17.65
|
|
Alliance
|
6.54
|
6.5
|
|
UKUP
|
3.69
|
4.52
|
|
PUP
|
3.47
|
2.22
|
|
NIWC
|
1.03
|
1.61
|
|
UDP
|
2.22
|
1.07
|
|
Labour
|
0.85
|
0.34
|
In addition to analysing first preference votes, the PRSTV electoral system
can also show how voters expressed their lower preferences, though there
are technical difficulties in extracting all the potentially relevant information
(For a discussion on these difficulties see Richard Sinnott in Irish Times
29 June 1998 - available on the internet at www.irish-times.com). The evidence
that this presents for voter behaviour in Northern Ireland is tentative,
as there are only 18 constituencies and therefore often very few examples
of transfers between any two given parties.
The results do however reveal that Sinn Féin has the most loyal party voters
with 87% of all their supporters transferring to another Sinn Féin candidate
when one was available. 68% of Sinn Féin voters then transferred to the
SDLP, however only 45% of SDLP voters returned the favour, and transferred
to Sinn Féin candidates. Alliance voters, where they had a choice, on average
went 36% to the UUP and 33% to the SDLP. There were simply no examples of
terminal transfers from the UUP to the PUP or UDP or from the PUP to the
UDP. Transfers from the UDP, to the PUP were not as high as might have been
anticipated, varying from 26% to 40%. PUP transfers to the UUP were reasonably
high at 43%, and PUP transfers to Alliance varied between 8% to 20%. There
was a wide distribution of the remainder of the PUP votes, mainly among
the various anti-agreement candidates.
There was little evidence of cross-community transfers from pro-agreement
UUP voters to the SDLP and vice versa. Voters mainly transferred within
their own traditional blocs. There are only a few cases to look at, but
even when Alliance was not available only 36% of UUP voters transferred
to the SDLP and even this figure of 36% does not really give any real indication
of the cross-community focus of UUP voters as it is greatly inflated by
transfers from the UUP to the SDLP in nationalist constituencies where the
object was to defeat Sinn Féin and not anti-agreement unionists. A majority
of UUP voters preferred to transfer to anti-agreement unionists rather than
the pro-agreement nationalist SDLP when that choice was available. In South
Down only 12 % of a UUP surplus went to the SDLP while nearly 75% went to
anti-agreement unionists. In East Antrim, while the number of UUP voters
willing to transfer to the SDLP when no UUP candidate remained was nearly
25%, the anti-agreement unionists still received the majority of the transfers.
Many UUP voters failed even to distinguish between the SDLP and Sinn Féin.
In Newry and Armagh and West Tyrone less than 40% of UUP voters transferred
to the SDLP in their fight for the last seat with Sinn Féin. |
