DUP suffers ‘bigger than seismic’ defeat with Ian Paisley losing seat held by family for more than 50 years

As the dawn broke on Friday morning, the surprises were just beginning.

Seats which were expected to be held – Lagan Valley, North Down – were lost. Other seats – South Antrim – went in a landslide. And seats which nobody had imagined would be in doubt – North Antrim – were suddenly in play.

Rumour swirled around the count centres; around 6am, the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) began firming it up. Its party leader, Jim Allister, had North Antrim.

As pundits and politicians awaited the official result, there was no doubt as to its significance.

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“Whatever bigger than seismic is,” presenter Mark Carruthers said on the BBC’s election results programme.

This was the safest DUP seat in Northern Ireland – a seat which, in 2019, was taken by Ian Paisley with a majority of 12,721 votes. Now it was Allister’s – by 450 votes.

The unthinkable had happened. The seat that had been held by a Paisley – Ian or his father, Ian senior – for more than 50 years, had fallen.

Going into this election, the breakdown in the North’s 18 constituencies was eight DUP, seven Sinn Féin, two SDLP and one Alliance.

The scores on the doors on Friday morning? Seven to Sinn Féin, five DUP, two SDLP, one Alliance, one Ulster Unionist, one TUV and one independent unionist.

The unionist vote had splintered at the expense of the DUP, which had a terrible night. The chink of light was the retention of Belfast east – widely tipped as the battle of the election – by the party leader Gavin Robinson, but it lost Lagan Valley – the seat formerly held by Jeffrey Donaldson and contested this time by Jonathan Buckley – and North Antrim and South Antrim – which put the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) back on the scoreboard for the first time since 2017.

Even in seats which the DUP held – Sammy Wilson’s East Antrim – it did so by only around 1,300 votes, down from a majority of nearly 7,000; Gregory Campbell held East Derry by fewer than 200 votes. Again, unthinkable.

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The DUP has much to consider in the days and weeks ahead, as Robinson alluded to in his acceptance speech. Such losses, he said, were a lesson in what happens when the unionist vote was split; he has already called for “greater cohesion” to prevent this happening again.

It remains to be seen what the wider consequences of this are for the DUP, not least given the divisions that still exist within the party and among the unionist electorate over the DUP’s handling of Brexit and the return to the Assembly earlier this year – divisions made clear by this election.

Jim Allister aside, the victor was Sinn Féin. It held its seven seats and despite a narrative early in the count that it would lose Fermanagh South Tyrone to the UUP, it ultimately romped home by more than 4,000 votes – tantamount to a landslide in this perennial marginal where its majority last time was a mere 57.

[ NI election: Sinn Féin now biggest party in Westminster, Stormont and council after DUP losses ]

Its performance took Sinn Féin to the “hat trick”, as Jon Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, has long referred to it. The history of Northern Ireland makes this significant; for the first time a nationalist party is now the largest at all three levels of government in the North – Assembly, council and now Westminster.

Job done, as far as Sinn Féin is concerned; it will do much to rejuvenate the party after a bruising in the elections south of the Border in recent weeks, and the party leadership has been quick to interpret it as further evidence of the desire for constitutional change in the North.

Job done too for the SDLP, which held both its seats, albeit with a much-reduced majority for party leader Colum Eastwood in Foyle.

But for Alliance it was a mixed bag – it took Lagan Valley but lost North Down – and the party will be disappointed that the Alliance surge, which has been the story of previous elections, has been, if not halted, then certainly slowed.

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