Northern Ireland Votes: South Belfast

South Belfast is something a bit different for us. So far all the constituencies we have covered have been Unionist-leaning, but this constituency is held, at Westminster, by the SDLP. That said, like North Belfast, South Belfast is a fairly divided area. The common perception of South Belfast is of a very middle class area, but there are some more deprived areas, especially close to the city centre. The constituency is also home to Queen’s University Belfast. The result is a constituency that is young and fairly mixed. The constituency is about 40% Catholic to 50% Protestant but it also has a fair immigrant population. Unlike other areas of Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants in this area do not tend to live in segregated communities but in middle class mixed neighbourhoods. As one would expect, therefore, there is a liberal, educated electorate here and both the SDLP and the Alliance are relatively strong here. So, the 2010 result:

Candidate	Party	Vote	Change
Alasdair McDonnell	SDLP	41.0%	+10.9%
Jimmy Spratt	DUP	23.7%	-5.9%
Paula Bradshaw	UUP/Con	17.3%	-4.9%
Anna Lo	Alliance	15.0%	+7.7%
Adam McGibbon	Green Party	3.0%	+3.0%

The mixed nature of the constituency has made it something of a target for sectarian wrangling. The SDLP took the constituency from the UUP in 2005. The UUP were pushed into third, and the SDLP beat the DUP by just over 1,200 votes. Sinn Fein did not run a candidate here in May, giving the SDLP a clear run. The Sinn Fein hope was apparently that through nationalist solidarity the SDLP would pull out in North Belfast and/or Fermanagh and South Tyrone. In the end the SDLP was the largest party to run a candidate in all 18 Northern Irish constituencies. In any case the Sinn Fein withdrawal probably didn’t make much difference here anyway as on these figures the SDLP probably would have won the seat anyway (the Sinn Fein vote is only around 10%). While boundary changes have theoretically made the seat very slightly more Protestant if anything the Nationalist vote seems to have made gains. The size of the cross-community vote in the constituency is also clear. It’s hard to get a predictive reading using this data however firstly due to the absence of Sinn Fein and secondly because the educated population of South Belfast are generally fairly well aware of electoral systems and are therefore long practised in the art of tactical voting and ‘split-ticket’ voting. 2007 then:

MLA	Party	First Pref	Round Elected
Jimmy Spratt	DUP	15.7%	1
Alasdair McDonnell	SDLP	14.4%	1
Alex Maskey	Sinn Fein	13.2%	10
Anna Lo	Alliance	12.6%	8
Carmel Hanna	SDLP	12.4%	10
Michael McGimpsey	UUP	8.7%	10
Conall McDevitt	SDLP	N/A	N/A

Best Losers	Party	First Pref	Round Eliminated
Christopher Stalford	DUP	6.7%	10
Esmond Birnie	UUP	5.9%	10
Bob Stoker	UUP	3.7%	8

Overall Result

Party	Vote	Seats
SDLP	26.8%	2
DUP	22.4%	1
UUP	18.4%	1
Sinn Fein	13.2%	1
Alliance	12.6%	1

The Incumbents

Jimmy Spratt (DUP) is this constituency’s sole DUP MLA. He was elected in 2007. A former councillor in Castlereagh (the constituency reaches into the outer reaches of this commuter town), Spratt is not particularly high-profile through Northern Ireland at large, as far as I can tell, but as the party’s 2010 Westminster candidate for the seat clearly enjoys more local name recognition. Having topped the poll in 2007, I see no real threat to Spratt’s re-election chances and he’s safe as far as I can see.

Alasdair McDonnell (SDLP) is a true SDLP heavyweight. The party’s deputy leader McDonnell ran for the leadership when the party’s former leader, Mark Durkan, resigned, narrowly missing out to Margaret Ritchie. His 2005 capture of the Westminster seat was a sensational result, and there are some who continue to claim that McDonnell would have made a better leader than Ritchie. The SDLP have an exceptionally strong local infrastructure here, though the two electoral offices in the region were each linked with one of the Assembly members in the last Assembly, with McDonnell being linked with the Ormeau/Stranmillis office. Now that Carmel Hanna has stood down as MLA, however, this may not be such an issue anymore. In any case a high profile SDLP member in one of the SDLP’s strongest seats is sure to be returned.

Alex Maskey (Sinn Fein) is a notable Sinn Fein politician – the party’s longest serving councillor, the first elected in Belfast and only the second elected in Northern Ireland. He is also the party’s first ever Lord Mayor of Belfast. He was originally elected as a MLA in West Belfast in 1998, but has been the party’s sole MLA for Belfast South since 2003. There is only a small Sinn Fein vote here, and the party has demonstrated signs of being ‘transfer repellant’ in the seat (that is to say that the party receives very few transfers from other parties), over 10 rounds of voting in 2007 Maskey gained only 266 votes through transfers. If the SDLP eats into his vote he may be in trouble here. That said if the SDLP does do this it will likely have the votes return to Sinn Fein through transfers. I would say Maskey needs to be upwards of 12% of primary votes to be sure of securing his seat, though recent election results have tended to show Sinn Fein on the up, particularly as they become less hard-line.

Anna Lo (Alliance) was the first ethnic minority MLA in the Assembly, and the first member of any British Parliament or Assembly to have been born in East Asia. As an ethnically Chinese, Taoist MLA, Lo is in good stead with the constituency’s ethnic minority population and with the constituency’s many liberal-left educated types who approve of That Sort Of Thing (diversity, immigration, multiculturalism etc.). Yet Lo has lived in Northern Ireland for thirty years, has been a social worker, operated as a journalist, started the first ever English language evening class for Chinese people in Northern Ireland, has been head of the Northern Irish Chinese Welfare Association, vice-chair of the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities, a founding commissioner for the Equality Commission in Northern Ireland and worked for Barnados. She has a MBE for services to ethnic minorities as well. Clearly Lo is an impressive individual in her own right. As Alliance candidate in 2010 for Westminster Lo got 15% of the vote, a number which would be enough to elect her on the first round (and possibly even have her top the poll) in an Assembly election. Lo is also well positioned to pick up votes from SDLP voters and from the minor, but notable vote for other cross-community parties in the constituency. From where I’m standing Lo appears to be perfectly safe, and fairly well entrenched.

Carmel Hanna (SDLP) was the SDLPs second MLA in his seat. She was briefly Minister of Employment and Learning from 2001-2, and was a well known SDLP MLA. She stood down in 2009 to be replaced by Conall McDevitt. Born in Dublin, McDevitt has a history in Public Relations. He was the SDLP’s Director of Communications in the late 1990s, a Special Adviser in the first Northern Ireland Executive, a former Managing Director of the PR firm Weber Shandwick, and a former Chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. McDevitt is also a noted political commentator, with a column in the Irish News, a noted blog and the occasional contribution to Northern Ireland’s premier blog Slugger O’Toole. A talented, well known choice then McDevitt should be easily re-elected as the SDLP should get enough votes here to win a second seat. Fortunately for McDevitt while the SDLP could have reasonably gone for a third seat in the constituency they have gone for the much safer option of standing two candidates – McDonnell and McDevitt. It is nearly certain that the SDLP won’t reach their 2010 figure, but as long as the party can hold the position as the largest party on popular vote, they should hold two seats easily enough. McDevitt has never been tested by the electorate before so it is hard to get any reading on whether he has any

Michael McGimpsey (UUP) has been Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety since May 2007. As such he is in charge of a super-ministry which accounts for about half of the Executive budget. A prominent UUP MLA McGimpsey has previously been Arts and Culture Minister and was once seen as a potential party leader and David Trimble’s likely successor. A left-leaning Ulster Unionist McGimpsey is a member of the Unionist Labour Group and the pro-European European Movement. Whereas McGimpsey’s personal vote was quite low in 2007 this was partially due to the bizarre decision by the UUP to run three candidates in a seat which justified two at the most. There is still a fair UUP vote in the constituency and McGimpsey should be quite safe.

The Challengers

Perhaps either McDevitt’s seat or Maskey’s seat could be at risk. This constituency is balanced on a knife edge between Unionists and Nationalists, but there are three Nationalists seats, 2 Unionist and a cross-community seat. So if things swing in the Unionist direction the Unionists may pick up a seat and the DUP are far better positioned to gain one.

Otherwise the 2010 Westminster result shows an encouraging result for the Alliance, if they can continue to grow in the constituency they may be able to pick off a shock second seat, especially with the degree of transfers they win in the seat. The Alliance do have a potential high profile candidate for the seat – Paula Bradshaw was the Conservative and Unionist candidate for the seat in 2010, and has since defected to the Alliance. The Alliance has not released its candidate list yet, however, so it is not even clear if it will stand a second candidate.

However both these scenarios strike me as very unlikely and if I was a betting man I would put money on all six of the current MLAs being returned without any real trouble.