The Braid Electoral Area lies largely to the east of Ballymena town touching upon the Glens of Antrim to the far north-east of the area where the only significant Catholic population in the area lies around the Village of Cargan. The Protestant Population is overwhelmingly Presbyterian.
In 1985, the new Braid Electoral Area replaced the previous Ballymena A which seems to have covered much of the same area. Independent James Woulahan was defending his seat and seemed set for victory having got just under 97% of a quota.
The U.U.P were on 2.12 quotas and the D.U.P. on 2.91 quotas.
| PARTY | CANDIDATES | VOTES | PERCENTAGE |
| D.U.P. | 4 | 2,572 | 48.5% |
| U.U.P | 3 | 1,873 | 35.3% |
| Ind. | 1 | 856 | 16.2% |
However he was to be denied as Unionists (largely) voted down the ticket to ensure that he was five votes short of a seat on the final count.
| PARTY | NAME | % | C1 | C2 | C3 | C4 | C5 | C6 |
| Martin elimination | McCullough Elimination | Armstrong (DUP) Surplus | Alexander Surplus | Armstrong (UUP) Surplus | ||||
| IND | Woulahan | 16.1 | 856 | +1 857 | +3 860 | +0 860 | +5.25 865.25 | +4.64 869.89 |
| U.U.P. | Armstrong | 14.3 | 757 | +37 794 | +127 921 | |||
| D.U.P. | Hanna | 14.1 | 746 | +41 787 | +42 829 | +21.33 850.33 | +19.25 869.58 | +22.62 891.80 |
| D.U.P. | Porter | 13.7 | 724 | +29 753 | +25 778 | +72.63 850.63 | +15.25 865.88 | +9.28 875.16 |
| D.U.P. | Armstrong | 11.8 | 628 | +353 981 | ||||
| U.U.P. | Alexander | 11.8 | 626 | +9 635 | +290 925 | |||
| U.U.P. | McCullough | 9.2 | 490 | +3 493 | ||||
| D.U.P. | Martin | 8.9 | 474 |
Starting as he did with 97% of a quota, this is quite possibly the highest proportion of a quota that a candidate has achieved in a multi-seat PR-STV election without being elected.
Below is a breakdown of the transfer statistics by count
| COUNT | PARTY | TYPE | D.U.P. | U.U.P. | IND | N.T. |
| 1 | D.U.P. | Elimination | 423 (89.2%) | 49 (10.3%) | 1 (0.2%) | 1 (0.2%) |
| 2 | U.U.P | Elimination | 67 (13.6%) | 417 (84.4%) | 3 (0.6%) | 7 (1.4%) |
| 3 | D.U.P. | Surplus | 94 (96.9%) | 0 (0.0%) | 3 (3.1%) | |
| 4 | U.U,P. | Surplus | 34.5 (84.1%) | 5.25 (12.8%) | 1.25 (3.0%) | |
| 5 | U.U.P. | Surplus | 31.9 (86.2%) | 4.64 (12.6%) | 0.46 (1.2%) |
Notice how over 10% of the U.U.P. terminal transfers went to the Nationalist candidate.
If – and if is a much abused word in politics – the U.U.P. had taken another forty or fifty D.U.P. first preferences, Woulahan would probably have held his seat.
Given my propensity for going down Rabbit holes rather than simply filling them in, I’ve prepared a breakdown of the vote in the Braid Valley area and its predecessors and antecessors.
The Unionist vote at just over 75% in 2023 was not that much different from the Unionist Vote of 84% in 1985 but it should be borne in mind the current Braid area extends to both the north and south of Ballymena Town taking in staunchly Protestant areas.
| YEAR | AREA | SEATS | U.U.P | D.U.P. | S.F. | S.D.L.P. | A.P.N.I. | Oth. U. | Other | Ind. |
| 1973 | Ballymena A | 4 | 45.3% (2) | 13.6% (1) | 2.3% | 38.8% (1) | ||||
| 1977 | Ballymena A | 4 | 28.3% (1) | 36.6% (2) | 4.5% | 30.5% (1) | ||||
| 1981 | Ballymena A | 4 | 37.8% (1) | 42.8% (2) | 19.4% (1) | |||||
| 1985 | Braid Valley | 5 | 35.3% (2) | 48.5% (3) | 16.2% | |||||
| 1989 | Braid Valley | 5 | 41.7% (2) | 40.9% (2) | 17.4% (1) | |||||
| 1993 | Braid | 5 | 65.6% (3) | 17.2% (1) | 17.2% (1) | |||||
| 1997 | Braid | 5 | 47.7% (3) | 32,7% (1) | 19.8% (1) | |||||
| 2001 | Braid | 5 | 40.3% (2) | 41.8% (2) | 17.3% (1) | 0.4% | ||||
| 2005 | Braid | 5 | 27.7% (1) | 53.8% (3) | 9.1% | 10.0% (1) | ||||
| 2011 | Braid | 5 | 20.8% (1) | 52.5% (3) | 9.1% (1) | 6.5% | 7.3% | 3.9% | ||
| 2014 | Braid | 7 | 17.2% (1) | 46.0% (4) | 8.2% (1) | 5.9% | 3.4% | 19.3% (1) | ||
| 2019 | Braid | 7 | 21.3% (1) | 37.7% (3) | 7.1% | 8.0% (1) | 20.1% (2) | 5.8% | ||
| 2023 | Braid | 7 | 18.6% (1) | 35.3% (2) | 13.8% (1) | 10.7% (1) | 21.5% (2) |
NOTES :
1973 – John J. O’Hagan was 87 votes away from the quota on the first count but was beaten by 14 votes by the DUP candidate on the final count. He promptly joined the S.D.L.P. and won a seat for them in the Assembly elections later that year.
1977 – The Independent vote consisted of (presumably) Nationalist Independent James Woulahan who was 68 votes over the quota on the first count and (undeniably) Unionist Independent Lyle Cubitt who has been a perennial thorn in the side of whoever the current Unionist establishment is at any particular time ever since.
1981 – James Woulahan found himself 25 votes short of the quota on the first and only picked up 2 votes in total before the final count. Going into it he was 72 votes ahead of an Official Unionist rival with a D.U.P. surplus of 96 to be distributed. He only received 1 vote but was saved by the majority of votes being non-transferable.
1985 – The new Braid Valley area replaces Ballymena A. It presumably took in some rural areas to the west of the old area. Woulahan was 28 votes off the quota, but this Unionists voted down the ticket and he lost his seat.
1989 – Woulahan regains his seat. The U.U.P. get more votes than the D.U.P. for the first time since 1973.
1993 – For the first time since 1973, there was no independent Nationalist on the voting paper. Comparing turnout in 1993 (56.0%) with that of 1997 (58.6%) when the SDLP were on the ticket, it seems likely that many Catholics turned out and voted for the U.U.P. who got nearly four quotas but only had three candidates. The D.U.P. vote was cut in half by the defection of Cllr Sam Hanna to the U.D.P. (The Ulster Democratic Party – linked to the U.D.A.)
1997 – Hanna returned to the D.U.P. who were closer to two quotas than the U.U.P. were to three. The U.U.P. took the final seat however due to the S.D.L.P. surplus favouring them by 7 to 1 over their Unionist rivals.
2005 – Sinn Féin enter the race for the first time and get only 56 votes less than the S.D.L.P. on the first count. The overall transfer of preference within the Unionist community is reflected here by the D.U.P. taking three seats to the U.U.P.’s one.
2011 – The T.U.V. enter the race for the first time in the wake of the D.U.P. entering power-sharing but fail to take a seat at their expense. Sinn Féin gain a seat at the expense of the S.D.L.P. – the S.D.L.P. transfers broke 59% for Sinn Féin, 30% non-transferable and 11% for the U.U.P.
2014 – Braid expands to a seven-seater taking in areas to the North and South of Ballymena town. The “Other Unionist” vote consists of 17.1% for the T.U.V. and 2.2% for the P.U.P.
2019 – This year saw losses for both the D.U.P. and Sinn Féin – the former only got three quotas leaving a battle for the sixth Unionist candidate seat between the U.U.P. and the T.U.V. – the former had more votes on the first count but their candidates were not well balanced. On the penultimate count, Keith Collins of the U.U.P. was only 50 votes behind Brian Turner of the T.U.V. with an Alliance surplus of 190 votes to be distributed – however Collins only got 50 transfers compared to 18 for the two T.U.V. candidates and 4 for the D.U.P. candidates. The reason why was that the Alliance surplus consisted of Sinn Féin transfers, leading to a non-transferable proportion of over 60%.
2023 – Sinn Féin won back their seat on the first count with the splendidly named Archie Rae – you can’t get more Ulster-Scots than that. For the second election in a row, the second T.U.V. candidate prevailed by only a fistful of votes, with U.U.P. transfers ensuring Matthew Warwick took the last seat by ten votes from Julie Philpott of the D.U.P.
The principal sources for information for this article were :
2023 Mid and East Antrim District Council election – Wikipedia – And also the 2014 and 2019 pages
Northern Ireland Elections (ark.ac.uk) – The One-stop Shop for Northern Irish Electoral Information curated by Nicholas White.