European Parliament election – first results

The proportions of the first preference votes received by each candidate are as follows:

Bairbre de Brún (Sinn Féin): 26.0%
Diane Dodds (DUP): 18.2%
Jim Nicholson (UUP): 17.1%
Alban Maginness (SDLP): 16.2%
Jim Allister (TUV): 13.5%
Ian Parsley (Alliance): 5.5%
Steven Agnew (Green): 3.3%

The proportions of the vote won by the two blocks (and the third 'non-block') in 2009, with the 2004 figures shown also for comparison:

Unionist: 49.0% (2004: 48.6%)
Nationalist: 42.2% (2004: 42.3%)
Other: 8.8% (2004: 9.1%)

These results are superficially identical to those of 2004 – all the changes at block level are less than 0.5% – the unionist proportion has recovered by 0.4%, the nationalist share has dropped by 0.1%, and the 'other' share has dropped by 0.3%. The big stories, though become visible when you look within the blocks.

The biggest story of the election – possible the only real story of the election is the collapse of the DUP vote. The party slumped to only 18.2%, it's lowest ever score in an EP election. The choice of Diane Dodds, and her appalling television appearances, has been blamed, but there is also a level of extreme-unionist rage with the DUP or having gone into the Executive with Sinn Féin. According to the DUP themselves, this election represents a "disaster". And it is – they have lost 87,415 voters (almost 50%) since the last EP election in 2004, some to the TUV and others to apathy. That is a shockingly bad outcome.

The DUP vote has gone in two directions: to the TUV (probably all of Allister's 66,197 votes came from ex-DUP voters) and to the apathetic, or perhaps more accurately, the turned-off.

For the DUP there is a dawning realisation that the TUV represents a genuine constituency, which takes its votes almost directly from the DUP. In order to stave off further losses and defections the DUP will probably move sharply to the right to recapture the extreme-unionists who have voted for the TUV. So for the foreseeable future (at least until after the 2011 year-of-elections) there will be minimal cooperation with Sinn Féin – no devolution of policing and justice, no Irish language measures, no concession on education, nothing. How this will play in nationalist circles is difficult to say. Having frozen the work of the Executive for much of 2008 in return for unrevealed promises from the DUP – which it seems have not yet been honoured and may now not be – Sinn Féin is not likely to be feeling charitable. However, freezing the Executive again may benefit the DUP who will then be seen as 'confronting Sinn Féin'. What else can Sinn Féin do?

Jim Allister, once seen as a mere thorn in the side of the DUP, received 28% of the unionist vote. The size of his vote has come as a surprise to many, but was signalled by this blog amongst others. By doing so he humiliated the DUP and opened the possibility for the TUV to play the role of extreme-unionist opposition in the three more important elections that must come in the next two years. The role Allister will play may well be the exact same role that the DUP itself played vis-à-vis the UUP in the period 1998-2007. Reports from the count verification say that he received more votes from the North Antrim boxes than the DUP, and he may be tempted to stand there in the upcoming Westminster election. However badly this EP election has stung the DUP, the loss of Ian Paisley's Westminster seat to their nemesis would be like a stake through the heart. There is still a significant constituency of anti-GFA unionists, and they are likely to use all possible means to upset the current arrangements.

A smaller, but still interesting story is the performance of UCUNF. Nicholson received 17.1% of the vote. This represents a small increase with respect to his tally in 2004, but a drop compared with 1999, and calls into question the potential of the UCUNF experiment. While UCUNF will argue that the non-merger is a new development and should be given time to bed down, the candidate, Nicholson, is a very long-standing politician and cannot be considered as a 'new brand'. It seems that he continued to receive the core UUP vote, and probably also received the Tory vote – but since the Tory vote at the most recent election in which they stood (2007 Assembly) was only 3,457, no-one will have noticed. It seems that UCUNF failed to excite the palate of the electorate.

It should be born in mind that the turnout in this election was exceptionally low: 42.8%, which demonstrates a level of apathy amongst the electorate which is not typical for Northern Irish elections. The results of this election cannot, therefore, be used to accurately predict the outcome of Westminster, Assembly or local elections.