WHILST the dust continues to settle on what was an historic election which saw Sinn Féin maintain their 27 seats and return to the Assembly as the largest party, the biggest story in West Belfast has to be the decline in support for People Before Profit.
In the 2017 election, the party ran two candidates in the form of incumbent MLA Gerry Carroll and Cllr Michael Collins. Five years later, they chose to consolidate their vote by opting to run only Gerry Carroll and still managed to see their percentage of first preference votes within the constituency almost halve.
Gerry Carroll received 7.51 per cent of first preference votes within the constituency which was down from the 14.87 per cent that his party received five years earlier. This was also a major drop in support from the 16 per cent that Mr Carroll achieved in the 2019 General Election.
Sinn Féin managed to increase their lead in the constituency with a swing of 1.88 per cent, returning four MLAs with 63.68 percent, up from their first preference vote of 61.8 per cent in 2017.
Going into this election, there was a concern in some circles that the party would struggle to maintain their four seats which was based on their result in the 2019 General Election where Paul Maskey’s vote slipped by 12.9 per cent to 53.8 per cent.
There is no doubt that the party benefitted from an energetic campaign and the constant sniping from the DUP with regard to their refusal to confirm if they would serve under a Sinn Féin First Minister, presenting them with yet another ‘crocodile’ moment which made the nationalist electorate even more determined to come out and deliver a bloody nose to Jeffery Donaldson.
Gerry Carroll
The SDLP went into this election throwing the kitchen sink at their candidate Paul Doherty. Hoping to capitalise on his growing platform within the community on the back of his work establishing the Foodstock foodbank, the party even held their campaign launch within the constituency.
However, this failed to pay off and Paul Doherty was a victim of the overall decline in support for the party returning with 5.79 per cent of first preferences which was down 2.77 per cent from the 8.56 per cent that his predecessor Alex Attwood lost the seat on in 2017.
This is also a significant drop from the 7.7 per cent that Paul Doherty achieved in the 2019 General election.
The DUP vote fell by 0.53 per cent in the constituency to 9.54 percent along with the UUP who lost 0.11 per cent of their vote.
This could be partly due to the candidacy of TUV’s Jordan Doran. Jim Allister’s party had not contested the 2017 election within the constituency and so it was expected that Mr Doran would eat into some of their vote.
Another new entry to the field was Gerard Herdman from the 'pro-life' party Aontú who came home with 4.01 per cent of first preference votes. The party had previously contested the 2019 General Election where their candidate Monica Digney received 4.2 per cent of the vote.
Alliance saw their vote grow by a mere 0.23 per cent with their candidate Donnamarie Higgins achieving 2.08 per cent of the vote. This is also a significant drop from the 4.9 per cent achieved by Ms Higgins in the 2019 General Election. Despite this, Donnamarie Higgins was a transfer friendly candidate and stayed in the contest until stage nine.
In 2017, their candidate Sorcha Eastwood, who was elected to serve as MLA for Lagan Valley this time round, was eliminated at stage one. West Belfast is the only area east of the Bann where the party haven’t benefited from their surge in support. This could be due in part to their being no formal party structures within the area.
Should the party choose to pump resources into the constituency, there is room for them to capitalise on the popularity of their leader, Naomi Long and for them to grow their support within the area.
When it came to the votes, Sinn Féin’s Danny Baker capitalised on his popularity within the Colin area and topped the poll with 9,011 votes which saw him elected on the first count. His surplus benefited all candidates, however his running mate, Aisling Reilly benefited most with an additional 1,028.47 votes. Sinn Féin’s Órlaithí Flynn also benefitted greatly from Baker's surplus with an additional 344.47 votes. This is due in part to her successful tenure as the party’s MLA within the Colin area before being moved to Andersonstown in this election to replace the outgoing Alex Maskey.
Pat Sheehan
The third stage saw the exclusion of independent candidates Declan Hill who received just 26 votes and Tony Mallon who achieved 129 votes. Their transfers benefited Aontú’s Gerard Herdman who received an additional 32 votes and fellow independent candidate Gerard Burns who received an additional 28.19 votes. Gerry Carroll also received 19.76 transferable votes and Aisling Reilly got 10.19 votes.
Stage four saw Workers' Party candidate Patrick Crossan eliminated on 204.51 votes. A plurality of his transfers went to PBPs Gerry Carroll who received 78.38 votes followed by SDLPs Paul Doherty who received 29.14 votes. Sinn Féin’s Órlaithí Flynn received 16.09 votes from Crossan and the Green Party’s Stevie Maginn received 10 votes.
Independent candidate Gerard Burns was excluded at stage five on 244.10 votes. Again, his transfers mainly benefited Gerry Carroll who received 70.08 votes and SDLP's Paul Doherty who received 36.28 votes. Altogether, the remaining Sinn Féin candidates received 52.84 votes from Burns with Órlaithí Flynn gaining most on 27.37 votes. Meanwhile Aontú’s Gerard Herdman received 17.19.
Green Party candidate Stevie Maginn was eliminated at stage six on 333.23 votes with his transfers benefitting Gerry Carroll who received 104.38. Donnamarie Higgins from Alliance also received a bump of 86.95 votes from Maginn and the SDLP received 43 votes.
Stage seven saw the exclusion of the Ulster Unionist Party’s Linsey Gibson on 483.95 votes. The majority of her transfers went to the DUP with Frank McCoubrey gaining 216.19 votes while TUV’s Jordan Doran got 108 of her votes. Alliance’s Donnamarie Higgins also benefited from 82 of Ms Gibson’s transfers while Gerry Carroll received 21.
TUV’s Jordan Doran was eliminated at stage eight on 918.38 votes. 803 of these transferred to McCoubrey while interestingly, Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan and Órlaithí Flynn each gained one vote from his transfers. 26.19 TUV votes also went to Alliance.
Donnamaire Higgins of Alliance was eliminated at stage nine on 1,134.81 votes. 478.51 of these transferred to the SDLPs Paul Doherty while Gerry Carroll benefitted from 238.23 additional votes. The DUP received 76.19 of her votes while 145.6 of her votes went to Sinn Féin with Órlaithí Flynn receiving 68.37 of those.
At stage ten, Sinn Féin’s Órlaithí Flynn reached the quota and was deemed elected on 7,407.63 votes. IRSPs Dan Murphy was excluded on 1,159.16 votes along with Aontú’s Gerard Herdman on 1,871.74. Gerry Carroll received 542.99 of their transfers while Paul Doherty received 404.28. DUP's Frank McCoubrey received 154 votes.
Stage eleven saw the SDLPs Paul Doherty eliminated on 3,636.94 votes. 1,543.46 of his votes went to Gerry Carroll which allowed him to take over the DUP's Frank McCoubrey who was on 5,489.71 votes. Aisling Reilly received 533 votes from Doherty’s transfers and was deemed elected having reached the quota.
At the end of stage eleven, Frank McCoubrey was excluded. Gerry Carroll and Pat Sheehan were deemed elected having failed to reach the quota.
