My analysis of the 2022 United Kingdom local elections part 3-the Northern Ireland Assembly

Northern Ireland's councils are not next up for election until 2024, but its Assembly election represented a sea change in Northern Irish politics in many respects, as much as is possible with a Single Transferable Vote system and religious sectarianism still dominating its politics.

Sinn Fein, for the very first time, managed to top the Assembly poll with 27 seats, even though this represented no change from 2017, and their vote share only improved to 29%. This happened due to the Alliance Party, the most significant non-sectarian party in Northern Ireland, making a substantial breakthrough by more than doubling its seat total to 17 and finishing third overall, although most of its gains were in heavily unionist constituencies of Northern Ireland, especially County Antrim and County Down, the two counties neighbouring Belfast. This stride, which builds on the substantial progress they made in the 2019 general election, is reflective of Northern Irish society becoming increasingly secular, albeit at a slower rate than in Britain, especially in Belfast and its commuter belt. The less well connected and less affluent western counties of Northern Ireland still lag behind in this respect, and indeed the Alliance did not elect a single MLA west of Lough Neagh (corresponding to counties Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone).

Even though the Alliance Party is officially non-sectarian (neither unionist nor nationalist), the two main unionist parties, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) were the parties most heavily hit by the Alliance surge. The DUP lost 3 seats and 6.7% of its 2017 vote, primarily due to a greater number of candidates standing for the more extreme Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), whose vote share increased by 5.1% yet due to them being one of the most transfer-unfriendly parties in Northern Ireland (in Strangford, TUV candidate Stephen Cooper finished third on 1st preferences but was not elected because he picked up too few transfers in later stages), they stayed at 1 MLA (Jim Allister) and in several cases split the DUP vote enough for Alliance candidates to sneak through, even though the Alliance are better at picking up transfers from the older, moderate parties on each side, the UUP and SDLP (Social Democratic Labour Party). Another notable loss for the DUP came when one of its former MLAs, Alex Easton, easily held his seat in North Down as an independent unionist; in North Down personal votes matter more than anywhere else in Northern Ireland, as does having an independent streak of some sort compared to the rest of Northern Ireland. The UUP only lost 1 seat despite trying and failing to appeal more to the pragmatic centre ground; notably their only seat loss was in East Antrim, which being close to Belfast is demographically shifting in the Alliance's favour. The SDLP was hit much harder, losing 4 seats, and in their case they have to deal with the additional problem of nationalists shifting more towards Sinn Fein in their traditional strongholds (even in Foyle they now hold an equal number of seats to Sinn Fein at Assembly level-2 each), and even in constituencies where the nationalist demographic is growing this is becoming more skewed towards Sinn Fein, as seen prominently in Belfast North's result.

One unfortunate consequence of the Alliance surge was the elimination of Northern Ireland's Green Party from Stormont; both the Green Party MLAs lost their seats to the Alliance although the Green vote only decreased across Northern Ireland by 0.4%. People Before Profit on the other hand was luckier; Gerry Carroll retained his seat in Belfast West even though People Before Profit's vote share dropped to just 1.1% despite fielding more candidates; in Foyle their candidate Shaun Harkin only managed to poll just over half of Eamonn McCann's 2017 first preference vote, but then again Belfast West has a much stronger "radical left" base than Foyle does. Aontu, primarily known for its pro-life stance, polled 1.5% of the vote and did not come close to winning any seats at all, and only in Foyle and Belfast West, the most nationalist constituencies in Belfast, did they poll even 4%, which reflects the increasingly liberal social attitudes of Northern Ireland's Catholic population. Claire Sugden and the aforementioned Mr Easton were the only Independent candidates to be elected; all other Independent candidates fared badly polling fewer than 1000 votes apiece. It was Conor Rafferty of the Resume Party that received the wooden spoon of this election, though, polling just 13 votes in Mid Ulster.

Because the Northern Ireland Act requires that the posts of First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland be filled by the largest and second-largest parties of the Assembly, the Sinn Fein-DUP power-sharing agreement must continue even though the DUP have said they will not fill the post until what they consider their issues with the Northern Ireland Protocol are resolved. The Alliance Party will become increasingly more influential, but will this help break the sectarian divide eventually? Only time will tell.