Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2003

Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2003

26 November 2003

All 108 seats to the Northern Ireland Assembly 55 seats needed for a majority   First party Second party Third party   Leader Ian Paisley David Trimble Gerry Adams Party DUP UUP Sinn Féin Leader since 30 September 1971 8 September 1995 13 November 1983 Leader's seat North Antrim Upper Bann Belfast West Last election 20 seats (18.5%) 28 seats (21.3%) 18 seats (16.7%) Seats won 30 27 24 Seat change 10 1 6 Popular vote 177,944 156,931 162,758 Percentage 25.7% 22.7% 23.5% Swing 7.2% 1.4% 6.8%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Mark Durkan David Ford David Ervine Party SDLP Alliance PUP Leader since 10 November 2001 6 October 2001 2002 Leader's seat Foyle South Antrim Belfast East Last election 24 seats (22%) 6 seats (5.6%) 1 seat (2.6%) Seats won 18 6 1 Seat change 6 0 1 Popular vote 117,547 25,372 8,032 Percentage 17.0% 3.7% 1.2% Swing 5% 1.9% 1.4%

Percentage of seats gained by each of the party.

First Minister before election Suspended Elected First Minister Suspended

The second elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, which at the time of the elections had been suspended for just over a year, were held on Wednesday 26 November 2003. Six members were elected by Single Transferable Vote from each of Northern Ireland's eighteen Westminster Parliamentary constituencies, giving a total of 108 MLAs, or Members of the Legislative Assembly. The elections were contested by 18 parties, and a number of independent candidates.

The elections were originally planned for May 2003,^[1] but were delayed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.^[1]

Political Parties

On the unionist side, the Democratic Unionist Party gained ten seats, primarily at the expense of smaller Unionist parties, to become the largest party both in seats and votes. Despite slipping to third place in first preference votes the Ulster Unionist Party actually increased their vote slightly and had a net loss of only one seat. Shortly after the election three Ulster Unionist MLAs, Jeffrey Donaldson, Nora Beare and Arlene Foster, defected to the Democratic Unionists.

On the nationalist side, Sinn Féin saw a big increase in their vote, gaining six seats at the net expense of the Social Democratic and Labour Party.

The minor parties all saw a significant fall in their support. The Alliance Party managed to hold all six of its seats despite their vote almost halving, the Women's Coalition, United Unionist Coalition and Northern Ireland Unionist Party were all wiped out, and the Progressive Unionist Party and UK Unionist Party had just one seat each.

The biggest surprise of the election came in West Tyrone with the election of the independent Dr. Kieran Deeny, campaigning on the single issue of hospital provision in Omagh.

Note

Several sitting MLAs stood under a different label to the one they had used in 1998. Some had failed to be selected by their parties to stand and so stood as independents, whilst others had changed parties during the course of the assembly. Most of these realignments occurred within the unionist parties, with several defections between existing parties and two new parties being formed - the United Unionist Coalition (formed by the three MLAs elected as independent unionists, though one later joined the Democratic Unionist Party) and the Northern Ireland Unionist Party (formed by four of the five MLAs elected as the UK Unionist Party, though one later left them, joined the Democratic Unionists for a period but contested the election as an independent unionist). Neither the United Unionist Assembly Party nor the Northern Ireland Unionists won any seats in the 2003 election.

Results

Party		Leader	Seats	+/-	% of seats	Number	% of vote
	DUP	Ian Paisley	30	+10	27.8	177,944	25.7
	Sinn Féin	Gerry Adams	24	+6	22.2	162,758	23.5
	UUP	David Trimble	27	-1	25	156,931	22.7
	SDLP	Mark Durkan	18	-6	16.7	117,547	17.0
	Alliance	David Ford	6	0	5.6	25,372	3.7
	Independent	N/A	1	+1	0.9	20,234	2.9
	PUP	David Ervine	1	-1	0.9	8,032	1.2
	NI Women's Coalition	Monica McWilliams	0	-2		5,785	0.8
	UK Unionist	Robert McCartney	1	-4	0.9	5,700	0.8
	United Unionist Council	Denis Watson	0	N/A		2,705	0.4
	Green (NI)	John Barry	0	0		2,688	0.4
	Socialist Environmental	Goretti Horgan	0	N/A		2,394	0.4
	Workers' Party	Seán Garland	0	0		1,881	0.3
	NI Conservatives	Michael Howard	0	0		1,604	0.2
	NI Unionist	Cedric Wilson	0	N/A		1,350	0.2
	Socialist Party	Peter Hadden	0	N/A		343	0.0
	Rainbow Dream Ticket	Rainbow George	0	N/A		124	0.0
	Ulster Third Way	David Kerr	0	N/A		16	0.0
Total			108	0	100.0	692,028	100.0

All parties with over 1,000 votes shown.

Electorate: 1,097,526; Valid votes: 692,028; Turnout: 63.05%.

SOURCE: ARK website

Votes summary

Popular vote
DUP			25.6%
Sinn Féin			23.52%
Ulster Unionist			22.68%
SDLP			16.99%
Alliance			3.67%
Progressive Unionist			1.16%
United Kingdom Unionist			0.69%
Independent			3.75%
Other			1.94%

Seats summary

Parliamentary seats
DUP			27.78%
Sinn Féin			22.22%
Ulster Unionist			25%
SDLP			16.67%
Alliance			5.56%
Progressive Unionist			0.93%
United Kingdom Unionist			0.93%
Independent			0.93%

See also

• Northern Ireland Assembly

References

1. The Northern Ireland (Date of Next Assembly Poll) Order 2003