Northern Ireland Votes: South Down

You may think that South Down would be next to North Down, you’d be wrong. Northern Ireland consists of six counties, and County Down is the most South Westerly, in-between North Down and South Down sits the constituency of Strangford, which, as we’re going in quasi-alphabetical order, we’ll be doing much later. South Down therefore is the most South Westerly constituency in Northern Ireland. It is a large, heterogeneous constituency, with no large dominant area, but a few small towns exist. The constituency is Catholic dominated, with almost 2/3^rd Catholic, this is the pattern closer to the border with the Republic, for obvious reasons. Indeed the constituency tends to be slightly more Protestant the further North you go. The SDLP have always been stronger here than Sinn Fein, though sometimes only barely. At Westminster the seat has been held by the SDLP since 1987 when they unseated UUP MP, and infamous ex-Tory Enoch Powell. Yes, you read that right, Enoch Powell. As recently as the 1990s the UUP could still muster a decent challenge here, but demographic and boundary changes mean the constituency is increasingly Catholic. As such the 2010 result looked like this:

Candidate	Party	Vote	Change
Margaret Ritchie	SDLP	48.5%	+1.6%
Caitriona Ruane	Sinn Fein	28.7%	+1.7%
Jim Wells	DUP	8.6%	-7.6%
John McCallister	UUP/Con	7.3%	-1.5%
Ivor McConnell	TUV	3.5%	+3.5%
Cadogan Enright	Green Party	2.1%	+2.1%
David Griffin	Alliance	1.3%	0.0%

The seat was held fairly easily by Margaret Ritchie, leader of the SDLP, with very little change. Indeed these figures add up to a 0.1% swing from the SDLP to Sinn Fein. The nationalist parties both gained votes, likely due to what are probably the most radical boundary changes in Northern Ireland, as the rural seat increasingly shrinks in size (despite this shrinking the seat is still the second most populous in Northern Ireland). The new boundaries have made the constituency 3.3% more Catholic and 3.1% less Protestant on 2001 census figures; if demographic trends have continued this seat will be even more Catholic. On these figures the SDLP would theoretically win 3 MLAs, Sinn Fein 2 and the DUP 1, but the SDLP tends to do a lot better in Westminster elections than in Assembly elections, as the 2007 figures will demonstrate:

MLA	Party	First Pref	Round Elected
Caitriona Ruane	Sinn Fein	13.7%	7
Margaret Ritchie	SDLP	12.7%	8
PJ Bradley	SDLP	12.3%	9
Jim Wells	DUP	12.0%	10
Willie Clarke	Sinn Fein	11.1%	8
John McCallister	UUP	9.6%	11

Best Losers	Party	First Pref	Round Eliminated
Michael Carr	SDLP	6.4%	11
Eamoon Convery	Sinn Fein	5.8%	7
William Burns	DUP	5.7%	9
Ciaran Mussen	Green Party	3.5%	6

Overall Result

Party	Vote	Seats
SDLP	31.4%	2
Sinn Fein	30.7%	2
DUP	17.7%	1
UUP	9.6%	1
Green Party	3.5%	0
UKIP	2.7%	0
Alliance	1.5%	0

The Incumbents

Catriona Ruane (Sinn Fein) is currently the Minister for Education in the Executive. As such she has stoked unpopularity due to her opposition to grammar schools (which are still in use in Northern Ireland). A former professional tennis player, Ruane is the sort of politician that Sinn Fein is increasingly trying to cultivate, a professional, middle class woman with no links to the IRA, and a strong record as a human rights and community activist. She has been a MLA here since 2003, and being a prominent MLA who topped the poll here in 2007 can count herself as safe.

Margaret Ritchie (SDLP) is the SDLP’s leader. Ritchie has a long career within the SDLP. She was a councillor from 1985, a parliamentary assistant to her predecessor as South Down MP, Eddie McGrady, a SDLP representative to the Northern Ireland Forum in the 1990s, a MLA for this seat from 2003 and the SDLP’s sole member of the Northern Ireland Executive from 2007 to 2010 (Social Development Minister) as well as MP for this seat. It is difficult to imagine that Ritchie will not be holding her seat come May. Indeed, I would expect her to top the poll.

PJ Bradley (SDLP) has been a MLA for this seat since 1998, and was well known in this seat for a long time before he became a MLA, a fact best explained by the fact that if you google ‘PJ Bradley’, Bradley’s real estate business comes up before his duties as a MLA. The seventy year old Bradley is standing down at this election.

Jim Wells (DUP) has been the sole DUP MLA here since 1998. Wells was a member of the abortive 1980s Assembly, representing this seat from 1982-6. A long-time councillor the DUP claims that Wells has set up the largest network of constituency support of any MLA in the seat (DUP members have traditionally had a reputation as tireless constituency representatives). Wells was formerly the DUP’s environment spokesman and in a party that has several significant figures who are environmentally sceptical Wells is well known for his environmentalist views. Wells topped the poll in this seat in 2003. While the boundary changes to this constituency reduce the Unionist vote in the constituency the UUP are more at risk here than the DUP, and Wells is probably safe.

Willie Clarke (Sinn Fein) is the second Sinn Fein MLA in this seat. A local councillor, and environmental campaigner, Clarke has come in for criticism by the Assembly Speaker for supposedly treating the Assembly with contempt. Clarke is the weaker Sinn Fein MLA here, but the Sinn Fein vote is solid and, if anything, should increase in size. He should hold his seat.

John McCallister (UUP) is the final MLA for the constituency. At a relatively young 37 McCallister was elected in 2007 for the first time, on the very final count, at the point where it was literally down to just two candidates – McCallister and Michael Carr of the SDLP. McCallister is primarily interested in rural issues, which is helpful with this being a rural seat. With boundary changes the UUP are very much at risk here. To be fair the 2007 results are perhaps not as bad as they first appear, the UKIP candidate here was a former UUP MLA and when he was eliminated the UUP received more than a third of his vote. Nonetheless things here are very tight for the UUP, with boundary changes and what is expected to be a bad election in general for the party at hand; McCallister will likely have to pull out all the stops to save his seat, though it is doable.

The Challengers

There is then, one seat which is open, PJ Bradley’s seat, and one seat seriously under threat, John McCallister’s. The SDLP is practically certain to hold Bradley’s seat, but they are running three candidates here, Margaret Ritchie, who will, of course, hold her seat, Eamon O’Neill and Karen McKevitt.

Both are councillors. McKevitt is the SDLP spokesperson on tourism and a councillor in Newry and Mourne. O’Neill is a veteran councillor on Down District Council and the current Council Chairman. Information is parse on them both and I wouldn’t like to speculate on who’s more likely to be elected as the second SDLP MLA.

However there is a chance here for a third SDLP MLA. With the UUP in dire straits and in a seriously vulnerable position in this seat the party best positioned to take up the UUP seat is the SDLP. If the 2010 election result were duplicated the seat would certainly be won by the SDLP in fact. However, the SDLP performs much more poorly in Assembly elections in the seat than in Westminster elections. They only beat Sinn Fein by less than 1% of the vote in 2007. If Sinn Fein win more seats, or balance their candidates better they may be able to take the UUP seat instead. Of course we shouldn’t count the UUP out completely, the seat is extremely vulnerable but it is winnable, especially if the party has a big transfer of votes from other unionists. McCallister, who was something of a neophyte in 2007, will also benefit from first term incumbency.