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LAST UPDATE | 5 May 2022
POLLING STATIONS HAVE closed following fresh elections to the Stormont Assembly.
The Electoral Office for Northern Ireland gave indicative turnout figures per constituency at 9pm on Thursday which averaged at around 54%, an hour before polling stations closed at 10pm.
They said the figure was based on the average of returns from polling stations.
The indicative turnout ranged from 60% in West Belfast to 47% in the South Antrim constituency.
The official final turnout figure will not be known until Friday morning. The turnout at the last Assembly election in 2017 was 64%.
The counting process will start at 8am on Friday to elect 90 MLAs to the devolved Assembly, with 239 candidates running.
Earlier, chief electoral officer Virginia McVey said: “We have a new system in place, so we are able to digitally monitor turnout.
The process is taking place to elect 90 MLAs to the devolved Stormont Assembly, with 239 candidates running.
Northern Ireland’s political leaders cast their ballots earlier today.
Sinn Fein vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, filled out her ballot paper in St Patrick’s primary school in her home village of Clonoe, Co Tyrone, accompanied by party colleague, Linda Dillon.
She posed for photographs with some voters before leaving.
Thirty miles away, the DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, cast his vote at Dromore Central primary school in Co Down.
Unionist rival, Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, voted at Seagoe primary school in Portadown, Co Armagh.
He said: “It’s polling day, I don’t think anybody really knows the outcome of this. Things change throughout the day.”
Naomi Long, leader of the cross-community Alliance Party, cast her ballot accompanied by husband, Michael, at St Colmcille’s parochial house in the east Belfast constituency where she was once the MP.
Colum Eastwood, leader of the SDLP, voted at the Model primary school in his home city of Derry accompanied by his wife, Rachael, and his children.
He said: “The people are all powerful today and the people will cast their vote.”
Jim Allister, leader of the TUV, voted early in the morning at Kells and Connor primary school in Co Antrim.
The DUP and Sinn Fein are vying for the top spot in the election, which comes with the entitlement to nominate the next first minister.
A unionist party has always been the biggest in the Assembly, and previously the Stormont Parliament, since the formation of the state in 1921.
While the office of the first and deputy first minister is an equal one with joint power, the allocation of the titles is regarded as symbolically important.
The Northern Ireland Protocol has cast a long shadow over the election campaign following the resignation of First Minister, Paul Givan, in February in an effort to force the UK government to act over the post-Brexit trading arrangements.
This action left the Executive unable to fully function.
While ministers remained in post, they were restricted in the actions they could take.
Unionists object to the additional checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain as a border in the Irish Sea.
Five Assembly seats are up for grabs in 18 constituencies, with the overall number of MLAs returned 90.
A total of 239 candidates are running.
Northern Ireland uses the single transferable vote (STV) proportional representation electoral system.
Counting will start at three centres in Belfast, Jordanstown and Magherafelt tomorrow morning with the first results expected the same day.
The DUP won 28 seats at the last Assembly elections in 2017, just ahead of Sinn Fein which returned 27 MLAs.
Next was the SDLP with 12 seats, the Ulster Unionist Party with 10 seats, Alliance with eight seats, the Green Party with two seats while People Before Profit and the TUV had one MLA each.
This year, the DUP has been regarded as playing it safe, running 30 candidates, while Sinn Fein is running 34.
Meanwhile, the UUP is running 27 candidates, the Alliance Party is running 24, the SDLP is fielding 22, TUV is putting up 19 candidates, the Green Party is running 18 and People Before Profit 12, as is Aontu, while the Workers Party is running six candidates and the PUP three.
The Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Socialist Party are each fielding two candidates, while the Northern Ireland Conservatives, Cross Community Labour Alliance (CCLA), Resume NI and Heritage Party are each running one candidate.
There are 24 independent candidates. Polling stations closed at 10pm.
The Labour Party leadership are in power for the sake of power and nothing else, they can’t see beyond the next election, which will be the last for many of them
It’s a bit late for Nessa to be talking about ‘core values’. Should have thought of those a year ago and refused the poisoned chalice of office in partnership with the Blueshirts under the control of the troika.
Here’s the way it is, Nessa — Labour’s conscience struggled with its opportunism long ago, it was a short battle and conscience lost. Any values were abandoned. We suffer now —next election, Labour will.
If Nessa has any core values left, she would leave this rotten sellout party.
Fianna fail put party before country for years, have we learnt nothing. It should be country first before any party
labour can look at the green party to see their future. the leftist feel lied to and betrayed and will voice that by voting socialist or independent, worse still, sinn fein will probably profit on labours loss, labour is in power but its future is bleak
Talk is cheap Nessa. You haven’t expressed anything that we don’t already know.
Labour won’t pull out of government. Are you then going to leave labour?
Like that’s really going to happen. Maybe Fine Gael will pull out too!
What you predict is already in motion nessa. They are supposed to be partners in government not bumbling sidekicks. I won’t be voting for labour anytime soon based on current performance unless something radical starts happening. though I don’t regret giving a preference to tommy broughan at the time, I believe he upheld labour values.
Well the Greens sold their souls to FF a lot of their members resigned from the party, you have to give credit to those members that resigned for upholding their beliefs. I don’t see any labour TD doing this, what does that tell you about them?
Labour has to look past its own interests and put the country first. Pull out of Government and what then?? There is no comparison whtsoever between the PDs, the Greens and the Labour Party. The Labour Party has strong core values and is seeking to implement them and defend them in Government under very difficult circumstances. The easy thing to do would be take no reponsibility, stay out of Government and surge ahead in the polls and what type of selfish, tribal politics is that? The kind that got the country in the fix it’s in, in the first place. Labour must take the hits, persevere and remain in Government to ensure fairness and to protect the most vulnerable. There has to be more to politics than simpl;y seeking to get elected the next time. There is more to Labour than slogans and the politics of protest, as we offer viable strategies and progressive and positive solutions to problems. Labour must forget about the polls and cynical protests playing to the gallery and on peoples fears. The public elected Labour to Government to do the right thing by the country.
“The public elected Labour to Government to do the right thing by the country.”
So why are they not doing it?
I recall ‘burn the bondholders’ for one.
Opposition to fiscal austerity, now transmogrified into support for the EU Fiscal Compact deal which would lock any future government into foolish and damaging compulsory EU budget policy.
Stop the bullshit, Senator. You sold out, and that’s that.
What positive solutions does he speak of?? Paying unsecured bondholders whilst the citizens of this country slide into dire poverty, is that what he means? What does he mean by cynical protests? The thousands of people who have been rallying and marching is that who he is referring to? The “doing right thing” he says what is that? Making us a slave state under Franco/German rule is that what he means by the right thing?
Mr Whelan my Grandfather was proud to have Met with Jim Larkin and James Connolly and to have become a member of the party at it’s foundation in 1912. He remained true to his socialist principles all his life and passed this on to his family. Mr. Whelan my Grandfather is turning in his grave at what his party has become, how dare the leaders of the party abandon their origins in their grasp for power at any cost and how dare they abandon the people who gave them that power.
I and many others will be protesting outside your conference tomorrow and the spirit of my Grandfather and the founding members will be with us because we are the people that your party deserted.
Senator,
“…..we offer viable strategies and progressive and positive solutions to problems….”
No, you don’t.
You only offer some minor moderations within exactly the same failed neo liberal economic framework that both created the crisis & continues to damage prospects for recovery.
Essentially, ‘Neo Liberal Lite’, just like the UK Labour party & US ‘Democrats’.
Do not be frightened to look beyond the mainstream of macro economics thinking that has been thoroughly ‘captured’ by the flawed assumptions & ideological bias in favour of the 1%.
There are real & transformative policies available that you & your colleagues could really fight for in the Eurozone, making common cause with other states being similarly oppressed in the interests of the top few percent of wealthy & financial elites. There are no barriers to such options in terms of economics or ‘costs’.
Please take the time read my other post below & consider it carefully. I can explain it personally to you if you wish (msg my facebook a/c).
Latest poll figures to come out this weekend don’t look too good for Labour.
So Labour will soon be pulling out of Government then Nessa, as I struggle to see anything being implemented by this Government which a person could describe as ‘Labour values’.
Labour values are gone down the tube everyone in the country knows this bar the cowboys sitting at the top table.
When we the people vote in a government, they put the party before the people everytime. Labour are the red headed step child of Irish politics and should all band together and waddle towards the door with their well fed asses
Ehhh… “If a power struggle is to take place in the party it should not sputter on for years, it should end soon and decisively.”
Personally think she’s writing to hurt Gilmore, nothing more.
In saying that, if she is being genuine & not just playing politics, than fair play to her.
Oh dear the cracks are starting
“I believe there is no excuse not to seek more progressive solutions.” – Nessa Childers
Quite so Nessa, but all we ever hear IS excuses, together with 180 degree U-turns from all the bold rhetoric your party leaders spouted BEFORE they were elected. (e.g. Mr Gilmore’s ‘economic treason’ statements, before he got into to power & then continued with precisely the same policies of the previous regime.
Allow me to assist you Nessa if you are TRULY interested in the ‘progressive’ solutions that ARE available if your party & FG can grow a pair (even small ones).
For a start, you will struggle to find a macro economist anywhere much in Europe not completely ‘captured’ by the failed paradigm of neo liberal (neo classical) economics that caused the crisis in the 1st place & making what has followed infinitely worse than it need be. (In fact, had the policies & thinking, offered below, been adopted 4 years, Ireland would be near fuly recovered & fully employed, bank losses taken on or not.)
Sadly also you will not find any useful economists in the so-called ‘progressives’ of the trades unions.
Start here:
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
and here:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/
With apologies to regular readers here, I repeat the policy option (based on the MMT principles explained in those links), which could be adopted immediately with transformative effects & no ‘cost’ to anyone.
As posted at the Journal previously:
“Just as the Euro Central Bank (ECB) created from thin air (as the Euro currency issuer) €1,000 billion to give to banks in the last 3 months, it do the same to reverse unemployment & stimulate economic growth throughout the whole currency union. There is no ‘debt’ or ‘cost’ incurred to anyone – this is what a currency issuer authority can do if we the people demand it.
Specifically, a minimum wage job, thus financed, can be offered to every unemployed person who wishes to take it up. (It must be purely voluntary, or it will lead to even worse exploitation.) The jobs offered must not compete with existing or normally waged employment in private or public sector. They must be flexible & not inherently designed to be permanent – workers will naturally migrate to ‘real’ jobs as the economy grows & recovers. Most ‘Job Guarantee’ jobs would be administered by the charity, voluntary & community sector, where extra labour is always needed for socially enhancing projects in the community. Projects not otherwise ever affordable or justifiable within normal public sector activities.
Whilst there are real social & community benefits to had (& possible experience & training benefits to participants), the important thing is the economic stimulus effect of them spending wages into the economy. Plus, of course, the savings in reduced aggregate unemployment benefits of the member governments. Savings which can make both debt payments sustainable & allow some restoration of frontline services & public investment, further stimulating growth & recovery.
There are no ‘financial’ or ‘economics’ reasons why this solution could not be adopted tomorrow. Only political will & vested interests of the elites are preventing such a policy.”
Ráiméis. Labour would never pull out! All rhetoric which people no longer buy in to. Actions speak louder than words, Nessa.
have your say