THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE TUV IN THE COUNT-TIME
It’s an open question as to whether God is man or a woman, but Jim Allister can be in little doubt that he or she is manifestly not a fan of Traditional Unionist Voice. The TUV took 7.5% of the assembly vote but only 1.1% of the assembly votes – quite possibly the most disproportional results a Proportional Representation system has delivered.
TABLE 1 : VOTES PER MLA
| PARTY | VOTES | MLAs | Votes per MLA |
| SF | 250,388 | 27 | 9,273 |
| DUP | 184,002 | 25 | 7,360 |
| Alliance | 116,681 | 17 | 6,863 |
| UUP | 96,390 | 9 | 10,710 |
| SDLP | 78,237 | 9 | 9,780 |
| TUV | 65,788 | 1 | 65,788 |
| PBP | 9,796 | 1 | 9,796 |
Foyle was one of the few places they didn’t take a decent portion of the Unionist vote, but all the same their 502 transfers on the 5th count proved pivotal – 282 went to Gary Middleton of the DUP over 194 for Ryan McCready of the UUP, and Middleton won the last seat from McCready by only 66 votes.
The TUV got to the last count in five constituencies : East Antrim, where Norman Boyd finished 2,077 votes behind David Hilditch of the DUP, Mid-Ulster where Glenn Moore polled strongly and was three and a half thousand votes behind Patsy McGlone of the SDLP in and Newry & Armagh where Keith Ratcliffe took over half a quota and was two thousand and nine hundred votes behind William Irwin of the DUP, West Tyrone where Trevor Clarke was two thousand seven hundred votes behind Declan McAleer of Sinn Fein and Strangford which I will discuss below. Mel Lucas didn’t make it the last count in South Antrim, but polled nearly 10% of the vote and was only 597 votes behind Trevor Clarke of the DUP on the penultimate count – a swing of 299 votes would have ensured Lucas’ election. In South Down, former UUP assemblyman Harold McKee took 6% of the vote but was never close to a seat.
TABLE 2 – PERFORMANCE OF TUV CANDIDATES
| NAME | CONSTITUENCY | % | ELIMINATED ON |
| Stephen Cooper | Strangford | 12.7% | Last count by 250 votes |
| Mel Lucas | South Antrim | 9.6% | 2nd last count |
| Keith Ratcliffe | Newry & Armagh | 9.2% | Last count by 2892 votes |
| Norman Boyd | East Antrim | 9.1% | Last count by 2077 votes |
| Trevor Clarke | West Tyrone | 9.1% | Last count by 2707 votes |
| Darrin Foster | Upper Bann | 8.4% | 5th count |
| Ron McDowell | North Belfast | 7.3% | 2nd last count |
| Glenn Moore | Mid-Ulster | 7.3% | Last count by 3446 votes |
| John Ross | East Belfast | 7.1% | 2nd last count |
| Lorna Smyth | Lagan Valley | 6.9% | 2nd last count |
| Jordan Armstrong | East Londonderry | 6.7% | 7th count |
| Harold McKee | South Down | 6.0% | 2nd last count |
| Alex Elliott | Fermanagh and ST | 5.6% | 5th count |
| Andrew Girvin | South Belfast | 4.1% | 4th count |
| John Gordon | North Down | 3.8% | 7th count |
| Jordan Doran | West Belfast | 1.8% | 7th count |
| Elizabeth Neely | Foyle | 1.1% | 4th count |
Stephen Cooper in Strangford was particularly unfortunate. He had over three quarters of a quota and on the 8th was on 5,868 votes, over 2,000 votes clear of Nick Mathison (Alliance) on 3,842 votes and Conor Houston of the SDLP on 3,802 votes. Houston was duly eliminated and a massive 61% went to Mathison ensuring his election over Cooper by 250 votes. IF Houston had managed to stay ahead of Mathison – it’s quite probable that Mathison’s transfers would have split more evenly between Houston and Mike Nesbitt of the UUP (who was just under the quota) with Nesbitt’s resultant surplus maybe not bridging the gap. In other words (strictly theoretically) if Cooper managed to win 41 votes off Houston during the campaign – those 41 extra number ones cost him the seat.
The TUV were ahead of the UUP in 7 of the eighteen constituencies – but this advantage availed them naught. In Mid-Ulster, Newry and Armagh, South Down and West Tyrone they may have eclipsed the UUP, but they were still behind the DUP in constituencies that there is only one Unionist seat. In West Belfast there is – at present – no Unionist seat.
The other factor against them was that whenever there were UUP terminal transfers available – the DUP always received more than the TUV. For instance in East Antrim, the DUP took 708 of the 1,752 transfers of the UUP’s John Stewart, Alliance 617, but the TUV only 401. Even when there was no other Unionist candidate available to receive UUP transfers they generally speaking only received about half the available transfers.
If the Stormont Assembly hadn’t been downsized from 6 seat to 5 seat constituencies in 2017 – the TUV might well have returned with 5 or 6 seats. As it stands, the best chance they have of getting seats -given their inability to attract enough transfers – is to place candidates close to the quota on the first count and/or get them above the second DUP candidate in Unionist-majority constituencies