Next Northern Ireland Assembly election
Elections in Northern Ireland are held on a regular basis to local councils, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to the European Parliament.
The Northern Ireland Assembly has 90 members, elected in 18 five-member constituencies by the single transferable vote (STV) method.Northern Ireland is represented at Westminster by 18 single-member constituencies elected by the first-past-the-post method, and at the European Parliament by a single constituency returning three MEPs by the STV method.
Unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom, elections in Northern Ireland are administered centrally by the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland and the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland rather than by local authorities.
The Unionist share of the vote dropped to its lowest ever level.
*The Independent candidates in North Down, Fermanagh and South Tyrone and Newry and Armagh can definitively be identified as Unionist.
The hardline DUP and Sinn Fein continued to make dramatic gains at the expense of the moderate UUP and SDLP.
This election was notable for its lack of electoral pacts.
There were no seats where a split vote for one "side" allowed the other "side" to gain the seat; the seven seats won by nationalist parties were the same seven seats where nationalists gained a majority of the vote, and the same was true for the unionists. This was accomplished by the DUP judiciously standing aside for the UUP in South Belfast. The DUP also stood aside for the UUP in Fermanagh and South Tyrone and West Tyrone, although this failed to produce a unionist winner in either seat (and the DUP also elected not to stand in North Down where it was a UK Unionist - Ulster Unionist fight). In return, the UUP stood aside for the DUP in Mid Ulster, though likewise this was not enough to win the DUP the seat.
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