Northern Ireland’s local election results with Freya McClements

Freya McClements, Northern Editor at The Irish Times, returns to the series to discuss the local elections held in Northern Ireland in May 2023 with Dr Niamh Gallagher (IOI co-convenor and lecturer in British and Irish History, University of Cambridge). How seriously should we treat these results as an indicator of national trends? What does the support given to Sinn Féin and Alliance mean for the region? Why are the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) failing  to attract voters? And how far has the ongoing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) boycott of Stormont hurt the party and influenced electoral trends?

Executive summary

• Journalist and author Freya McClements joined the IOI series to discuss Northern Ireland’s May 2023 local elections, which were held during the ongoing DUP boycott of Stormont. She explained the key conclusions to draw from the results, and what these may mean moving forwards for Northern Ireland.
• Sinn Féin won a historic victory, becoming the largest party at a local level in Northern Ireland for the first time. It was also the first time a non-unionist party has achieved this. Having done the same in 2022 at the Assembly elections, Freya thinks Sinn Féin will now be aiming to complete three-for-three at the next General Election, expected to be held in late 2024. Freya credited Sinn Féin’s victory to several factors including: their party organisation and vote management abilities, the end result of a multiple-election strategy to build votes, anger at Michelle O’Neill being deprived of the First Minister position by the DUP, and the impact of Brexit and Boris Johnson’s premiership on Northern Ireland.
• The DUP remained the largest unionist party, with the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party only making minor gains, and the UUP faring badly. Although DUP councillor numbers remained the same, there was movement across seats as some were lost and others gained. Freya argued that unionism must try to appeal to a broader base to succeed, rather than trying to unify an increasingly narrow one. Notably, the cumulative first-preference vote  for unionist parties would not have beaten the cumulative nationalist equivalent.
• Alliance also repeated their 2022 electoral trend of making steady gains, although they did lose key votes in Londonderry/Derry . Freya thinks they could be under increasing pressure to declare a position on the constitutional question in the coming years as the border poll debate becomes more mainstream, a pressure they are likely to have to withstand.
• In terms of Sinn Féin’s victory and the prospects for a border poll, Freya doesn’t think you can extrapolate their votes as being necessarily equivalent to support for Irish unity. However, as their electoral momentum builds over successive elections, it is likely to encourage Sinn Féin and make the discussion about a unified Ireland more mainstream, in some quarters at least.
• The election will put more pressure on the DUP to return to the Executive and allow Stormont to function. The power of the nationalist vote being galvanised behind Sinn Féin on the issue of restoring Stormont will alarm the DUP , while the failure of the TUV to threaten them as a dominant unionist voice should encourage less hardline positions. 

About the speaker

Freya McClements is the Northern Editor at The Irish Times and the co-author of ‘Children of the Troubles: the Untold Story of the Children Killed in the Northern Ireland Conflict’ which won the Irish Book Awards ‘Best Irish-published Book of the Year’ award in 2019.

Watch the conversation

What was said?

Following the local council elections in Northern Ireland in May 2023, the IOI series welcomed Northern Editor at The Irish Times, journalist, author, and previous contributor to the series, Freya McClements to discuss what the results might mean for the region. As Freya explained, the elections didn’t receive much coverage in the run up to the ballot, as Northern Ireland politics continued to focus on the ongoing DUP boycott of Stormont and the Executive that has frozen the Assembly, and April saw attention being almost exclusively paid to the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. The lack of attention doesn’t reflect how important the local elections were for all the main parties in Northern Ireland, as the key trends witnessed at the Assembly elections in 2022 were repeated and reinforced.

Freya’s intervention explored some of the key headline takeaways from the election, starting with Sinn Féin’s historic victory, becoming the first non-unionist party to become the largest party at a local level in Northern Ireland’s history. They retained all 105 seats they held and won and additional 39, ending with 144 in total, despite only needing 122 to become the largest party. Freya attributed this to their ‘legendary’ vote management skills and demographic and social changes, as well as pointing to a longer strategy which has seen Sinn Féin gradually build votes across subsequent elections. In a repetition of the 2022 assembly elections, much of the nationalist vote united behind Sinn Féin, amid widely-felt anger over the DUP boycott which has prevented Michelle O’Neil from taking her place as First Minister and blocking Stormont from being restored. The victory is also historically significant in overturning the historic idea that Northern Ireland was a ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’. Freya predicted that Sinn Féin will now be looking at the General Election in the UK expected to be held in 2024 to see if the party can win three out of three.

For the DUP, the elections saw them return the same number of councillors as they had held before the vote (122) but with some movement as some seats were lost and some were gained. The election did confirm the DUP as the majority unionist party, as the threat posed by the TUV from the DUP’s more conservative flank didn’t materialise and the UUP had another disappointing election, losing 21 seats (54 councillors won). The  Alliance party gained 14 councillors, winning 67 in total, continuing the now established trend of their rising popularity across subsequent elections.  They  did lose key councillors in Londonderry/Derry and once again failed to win anything west of the Lagan  but Freya stressed that overall, Alliance would be pleased and the momentous gains in the 2022 assembly elections would have been difficult to repeat. Like the UUP, the SDLP also had a disappointing result, losing 20 seats, coming home with 39. 

What does this all mean for Northern Ireland and its politics? For Sinn Féin and nationalists it’s another symbolic moment. Unlike Stormont, work in local government is continuing, but the election offered another opportunity for voters to send parties a message that potentially relates to wider politics. It is fair to say that the election has created renewed impetus to restore Stormont, with Michelle O’Neil issuing fresh statements calling for the DUP to return, and Micheál Martin (Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste/Deputy Prime Minister) visited the parties in Belfast to discuss the crisis. Starkly, sixty-four percent of the vote went to parties who support restoring Stormont, with the DUP taking only twenty three percent, and with the balance distributed among smaller parties including the TUV. 

This was a continuation of the trends seen in the 2022 Assembly elections. Freya argues that the assumption now is, unless the DUP return to Stormont before the next General Election, the trends could continue when it comes to electing MPs next year. She noted that the DUP in particular would be wary of the prospect of the nationalist vote coalescing around the same grievance of Michelle O’Neill being denied her place as First Minister in a campaign for Westminster seats.  Sinn Fein’s campaign powerfully singled in on this injustice. 

With regards to whether the DUP will return to Stormont, Freya predicted it would not happen over the summer, but thinks Autumn 2023 may be a more realistic timeframe. She argued that the DUP must understand that if they continue to boycott the Assembly, it will reach a point where the Executive may choose to continue without them, and they will become electorally irrelevant.  Freya also noted that the failure of the TUV to meaningfully threaten the DUP means the party leader Jeffrey Donaldson could also be emboldened to return to Stormont.

Considering the future of unionism in Northern Ireland, Freya rejected the idea that a fragmented unionism simply needs greater unity in order to do better electorally. She noted that the cumulative nationalist party first-preference vote was 40% compared to the cumulative unionist vote of 38%. Rather, in her opinion, unionism needs to focus on broadening out its appeal to a wider base, rather than unifying a narrow one. 

The discussion with Dr Niamh Gallagher which followed Freya’s remarks considered how the results may affect the prospects for a future border poll. Whilst Freya cautioned that you cannot extrapolate all votes for Sinn Féin as being necessary equivalent to support for a united Ireland, she did note that 31% of people were happy to give their first-preference votes to a party who declares its main ambition to be Irish unity. She further explained that whilst Sinn Féin didn’t campaign on a platform of a border poll – rather they focused on ‘making politics work’ – the discussion about Irish unity is increasingly a mainstream one, and this election will doubtless give Sinn Féin further encouragement and momentum on the issue.

Tactics were also important, as Niamh suggested, and Freya explained about how Sinn Féin’s campaigning strategy on the ground played a key role in the victory. Anecdotally, she recalled one household who had spoken to a campaigner the year before. This year, the campaigner remembered the house and could explain what Sinn Féin had done to address the problems they’d raised the year before. Such attention to the needs of constituents and potential constituents resonated, as did messaging about being councillors ‘for all’, mirroring Michelle O’Neil’s promise to be a ‘First Minister for all’. Another explanation for their victory, according to Freya relates to how: ‘people like to vote for winners’. Once momentum builds around a party, it becomes easier to build more. The sense of unfairness and grievance felt by the nationalist community about Sinn Féin being prevented from taking up the position of First Minister has been a ‘galvanising force’ in uniting the nationalist vote behind one party.

In a separate line of questioning, Niamh also asked why people continue to vote for parties who refuse to participate in the democratic institutions. Freya explained that, unfortunately, Northern Ireland voters are used to this sort of politics. Stormont hasn’t sat for 40% of the time since power-sharing was introduced in 1998. As Freya argues, when people disengage from the democratic process, they turn to alternatives. She doesn’t think there is much chance of a return to the levels of violence seen during the Troubles, but working within institutions is preferable to seeking alternatives that work outside them. 

Niamh finished the seminar by asking what the perception of the election was in the Republic of Ireland. Freya explained that there are two main threads to this. The Irish Government  are very clear on wanting the Assembly to get up and running. On the flip side, the current Irish Government is a Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green Party coalition who see Sinn Féin as their immediate rivals and challengers for key seats across the country. The reality of having one party holding majorities in both parts of the island may mean the increased possibility of a border poll in the years ahead – something the Irish Government is nominally in favour of but which favours a more long durée, cautious approach than Sinn Féin does.