NI - Westminster Election 2024

You think everyone will sit twiddling their thumbs.
Never works like that.

Well it will be the job of SF etc to ensure it isn’t ignored.
That is all I said. Remains to be seen how a Labour government responds.

The plan will set out what the proposers of a UI (the Irish Gov) believe a UI will look like.

Might be a good idea to actually talk about the election in this thread instead of rehashing the same back and forths we've all had a heap of times on various Unification related threads, folks?

Don’t see any issue discussing the implications of an election myself.
But whatever.

Fionn, I wasn’t making any argument for Unification. I just posited one of things that might happen now. Happy to leave it having given a view.

I don't see any movement toward a United Ireland based on these results which seem to suggest that project is completely stalled, unless I'm missing something.

Sinn Féin are trying to pretend the opposite despite the Nationalist/Republican vote being a bit lower than in 2019.

The Nationalist/Republican vote is slightly up from 2019.

SF +4.2

SDLP - 3.8

Aontú -0.2

So +0.2 overall even if we exclude the non-aligned but very largely Nationalist PBP and Green votes which were both up.

Not hugely significant but I've heard a few people repeat this today and I'm not sure where it is coming from.

Has there been any analysis of how the results would have looked if STV was used (i.e. eliminate each lowest vote candidate in turn and redisribute their votes)? Obviously you don't know how the preferences would have gone but you could asign each candidate as Nationalist, Unionist or Other and share each eliminated candidates votes equally amongst the remaining so assigned candidates.

Would be interesting to see given several constituencies were very close and "vote splitting" was possibly a factor.

you could put a red white and blue or green white and gold rosette on a donkey and it would get elected in Northern Ireland’

Probably the most I've ever agreed with you on something here.

I'd guess something we've both been guilty of ourselves. I've talked multiple times about how when I lived in FST, I voted for SF on many occasions.....not because I wanted to vote SF, but because it was the only way to block the Unionist candidate for around the last 20 odd years. I'm not very familiar with Diana Armstrong not living there any more, but jaysus when the UUP stood someone there, it often seemed like we got the absolute worst of the party. I would've voted for an inanimate carbon rod if it meant stopping Tom Elliot taking a seat (and I'm sure Tom got an awful lot of votes from people thinking the same of Michelle Gildernew for example).

SF vote decreases?.....Their vote share percentage increased by over 4% when they stood in 4 fewer constituencies. I think you might be looking into that one a bit too much.

Overall Nationalist voteshare is up very marginally, so I'm curious about what you're basing your numbers on Unionist vote extending it's lead on?

Even the SNP wipeout would say more about the Scots wanting to give the Tories a bloody nose and internal SNP controversy than any support for or against Scottish Independence by my reckoning.

I do think it is pretty foolish to try and extrapolate anything on trends for support for Unification or remaining part of the Union (or indeed pretty much anything else) from a FPTP Westminster election result. Beyond the optics of SF saying they're now the largest NI party at all 3 levels, not much change from the Nationalist side. The DUP collapse and further fracturing of the Unionist vote definitely leaves Unionism looking vulnerable in at least 3 more seats going forward. If Flegory had missed out and SF had increased their seat count, the optics would be pretty disastrous for Unionism, so be glad for that hundred odd votes I suppose.

Given that most of us on the Nationalist side have argued that Brexit increased the chances/brought up the timeline for Unification, it would be pretty difficult to argue that closer alignment with the EU wouldn't at least partially counteract that in fairness.

The problem with raw number comparisons like this is that you can't easily say how much of the difference is due to difference in overall turnout, how much is due to voters changing allegiance, and how much is a product of electoral strategies.

SF ran candidates in only 14 consituencies this time around, so all other things being equal their vote - both as a numerical total and as a percentage of the total vote — was likely to decline. They knew that, but they also knew that vote totals are not what matters most in an election. Their strategy delivered the results they wanted, so they'll be happy with it.

Ingram is comparing the total of votes secured in 18 constituencies in 2017 with the total secured in 14 constituencies in 2024. That comparison doesn't have the signficance he seems to think it does.

You'll note in the second image, they're quoting vote share of the total electorate.....in an election that had a reduced turnout and in which SF didn't stand in 4 constituencies.

I suspect the two fellas posting those tweets understand just fine the weakness of just looking at raw numbers and are very intentionally presenting them in that manner.

As I said previously, analysing raw numbers in a FPTP election without consideration for any strategic moves (SF intentionally pushing an undefined but certainly non zero amount of the Nationalist vote towards the non-aligned APNI in Lagan Valley, North Down and Belfast East as an example) is a totally pointless endeavour. To be clear, I think it is equally pointless when trying to paint a huge SF win as somehow being a victory for Unionism or trying to interpret it in such a way to imply sufficient support for a border poll.

Yes, because your government insists on FPTP voting. It isn't, 'interesting', it's more of a feature than a bug.

The numbers above are pretty typical because of how FPTP works. The winners of the most seats inherently have fewer votes per seat.....because 100% of the votes in the seats you're not elected in go to waste. If they've won more seats, then far fewer of their votes are, 'wasted' on not getting them seats. To take a more extreme example; a party who stood in every constituency and got a handful of votes but zero seats would have a requirement of infinity votes to elect someone based on the (inherently flawed) maths demonstrated in your post.

If you're making an argument against FPTP, I'm in total agreement. It's a stupid system. If you're using it as a way of pretending that Unionism/The Tories/Reform UK or whoever somehow really 'won', well that's just silly. A different voting system wouldn't magically have the same voting pattern so you can't just take FPTP voting numbers and work them into what a proportionally representative system would chuck out.

Thanks for your copy paste.....did you pop on to ChatGPT again?

Fortunately I was already aware of the pros and cons of FPTP voting and didn't need ChatGPT to explain it to me before coming to the conclusion that it is f*cking stupid.

You can't have it both ways, whinging that SF and Labour got more seats-per-vote than your chosen parties and then wrapping yourself up in a flag and getting defensive when it's pointed out as a specific weakness of your government's chosen voting system.

As I said, it's a feature not a bug. Those 150,000 votes per seat for APNI.....that's your, 'keeping the extremists out' in action.

With 8 seats out of 650, I'm not really sure what negotiating power you think they have, Sam? I don't think even with 100 seats they'd be able to negotiate what they would want to get them to sit in the HoC (I suspect it would result in them not staying in HoC for very long).

I genuinely think it would be political suicide for them at this point in time, and I can't see any upside whatsoever from a SF perspective.

They have achieved as much if not more for their electorate as 'abstenionists' and that is reflected in their vote. They also have a serious tilt at EL and Foyle next time out. Eastwood's majority was seriously reduced this time. A slightly better day for SF could have seen them take nine seats.
People fool themselves into thinking that abstentionism means SF take the money and twiddle their thumbs, they don't, they are doing all the representative work others are doing in Westminster.

Lost much more than that. He lost 17.4% of his vote while the SF candidate gained 8.7%

There was in effect just over 3000 votes in it.

I would think they reckon they can take some of Colum's vote.
Eastwood out polled even John Hume in 2019, now down over 10,000 votes on that performance, SF's best day was 18,000+ votes.
So they won't necessarily need to eclipse Aontu or PBP, just find the right candidate and Duffy seems to be that person. A seat for the taking.

Here we go again.

Why can't people accept that their mandate is to NOT take up their seats?