Support for power-sharing government boosts Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin but low turnout mars result
The Ulster Unionist party (UUP) faces being pushed into fourth place in the Stormont parliament, marking more than a decade of electoral decline. The party is in danger of losing one of its two ministries in the power-sharing government.
But support for the two main parties – Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) – underlined ongoing cross-community support for the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
Back in 1998, under the Nobel peace prizewinner David Trimble, the UUP was the major unionist party, but it has now been fully eclipsed by the DUP.
The collapse of the UUP was most pronounced in its former bastion of North Down, the most prosperous constituency in Northern Ireland. The UUP's two candidates, the sitting assembly member Leslie Cree and former police officer Colin Breen, won only 10% of first preference votes.
The UUP's losses followed a disastrous general election last year when, under an alliance with the Conservative party, it failed to win a single Westminster seat.
Although counting began only on Friday and will continue well into Saturday evening, tallies at the various counts indicated that the DUP would emerge as the single biggest party. This will secure the post of first minister for the DUP leader, Peter Robinson, again.
The DUP profited from raising fears among unionist voters that Sinn Féin would become the main party and make Martin McGuinness first minister.
In North Antrim, Ian Paisley's former stronghold, it appeared from the tallies that the leader of the anti-power-sharing Traditional Unionist Voice, Jim Allister, was likely to take a seat. But in other constituencies the DUP was confident of gains, particularly in Strangford, the former base of the disgraced "first lady" of Northern Irish politics, Iris Robinson. She resigned from her Westminster seat last year after a scandal involving a business deal she secured for a teenage boyfriend.
Among the winners in the assembly election was the centrist Alliance party. Its candidate in South Belfast, Anna Lo, was on course last night to top the poll. Lo is the only Chinese-born candidate to be elected to any devolved or national parliament in the UK. She said she had got "votes from all sections of the community, from unionists and nationalists, and that is what the Alliance party is all about".
Election staff said the turnout could be the lowest ever in Northern Ireland at around 55%. The nationalist Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) said the turnouts in nationalist areas were much higher than in areas with large unionist majorities. In unionist-dominated North Down the turnout was just under 46%. Northern Ireland has previously recorded some of the highest election turnouts in the democratic world. When the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone byelection 30 years ago, more than 80% voted.
By early evening election staff had started the count in most constituencies. The SDLP's deputy leader, Patsy McGlone, blamed the delay on the fact that there were three ballot papers for each voter. Seven count centres were reporting problems with the verification process.