Upper Bann
2022 Election Analysis
Upper Bann will be a strong barometer for many of the parties in the upcoming assembly election. We can split the parties into two groups, potential winners and potential losers. The potential winners are Alliance, the UUP and Sinn Fein while the potential losers could be the DUP and the SDLP.
2017 Winners
1 - Doug Beattie (UUP)
2 - Jonathan Buckley (DUP)
3 - Dolores Kelly (SDLP)
4 - Carla Lockhart (DUP)
5 - John O’Dowd (Sinn Fein)
The DUP are running two candidates this election, Jonathan Buckley and Diane Dodds (former Minister for the Economy) who was co-opted in January 2020. In the 2017 election, both DUP candidates (Buckley & Lockhart - elected as MP for Upper Bann in 2019) had a strong set of first preference votes, accumulating 7,745 and 9,140 respectively, meaning neither had to rely on transfer votes. However, both the TUV and UUP will be looking to syphon votes from the largest unionist party in the hopes of stealing away one of the DUP’s seats. That is why this area may well act as a barometer for the DUP’s electoral fortunes. What was once considered two safe seats could well become a battleground if the DUP drop-off is as harsh as many in the media have predicted. The party will hope that having Diane Dodds (a Minister and former MEP) and Jonathan Buckley (one of the younger faces within the party) protecting their seats should be enough to get them across the line.
The other potential losers in Upper Bann could be the SDLP with Dolores Kelly. In 2017, Kelly received fewer first preference votes than the runner-up (Nuala Tomas - Sinn Féin) who received 6,108 to Kelly’s 5,127. It took transfer votes from both UUP candidates and Alliance’s candidate to get the SDLP over the line, accumulating 9,053 votes by the end of transfers. The question will be whether the SDLP can achieve the same level of transfers and if the parties who transferred votes to the SDLP are in a stronger enough position to knock Kelly out in the earlier round. This has been an SDLP seat for all but one year since 1996 so the party would be bitterly disappointed to lose here and would be the mark of the SDLP’s stagnation over the last few years.
Sinn Fein will feel like they have already won no matter the result in this constituency. John O’Dowd has been MLA since 2003, served as the Minister for Education, and briefly acted as Deputy First Minister (Sept-Oct 2011 during McGuinness’s run for Presidential Election in the South). O’Dowd also received 8,220 first preference votes in 2017, not even having to rely on transfers to get over the line.
Sinn Fein’s second candidate in the area, Councillor Liam Mackle, will be looking to snatch the SDLP’s sole seat if the opportunity presents itself. Stealing the seat maybe unlikely but it could materialise as Sinn Fein’s previous second candidate in 2017 (Nuala Toman) received 6,108 votes. The issue with this being that Sinn Fein are not a transfer friendly party in Upper Bann. Two seats is not impossible but they would most likely have to rely on SDLP transfers and a repeated strong turnout of their voter base to make a good run at it.
This will be one of the areas which test’s the Alliance surge. Tara Doyle ran for the party in 2017, only received 2,720 first preference votes and was knocked out after the second stage. Eoin Tennyson has replaced Tara Doyle and appears to be one of the members of the party who could snatch a seat in a constituency where Alliance has never previously found electoral success. Tennyson won 6,500 votes in the 2019 Westminster Election and the party as a whole have been seeing a substantial increase in polling over the last year. Tennyson will be in competition with both the SDLP and Sinn Fein for that fifth seat but Alliance may have an edge with the possibility of pulling in transfers from across the board.
While the UUP are potential winners in this area, they also have something to lose. Doug Beattie (party leader) is another candidate who received fewer first preference votes than the runner up last election, with Beattie only receiving 5,467 1st pref votes in 2017. It should be noted that the UUP ran for two seats in 2017 and will be doing so again this election (with a new candidate in Glenn Barr). Like in many constituencies, the UUP will need to carefully co-ordinate their vote management. If they get it right, they could challenge for the second seat by diverting some votes away from the DUP and building on the 5,000 votes their second candidate received last election, stealing a seat away from the SDLP or even the DUP on a very good day. If their votes are managed poorly, they could even see Beattie lose his own seat. The embarrassment of a party leader losing his own seat would be extremely detrimental to the UUP in its current state. The party is playing a risky game and we will see if it plays out.
There is a chance that nothing will change in Upper Bann but the movements happening in vote share could be very telling for the future direction of NI politics. Alliance’s surge could prove to be real, the UUP’s fate hangs in the balance of some unknown quantities and Sinn Fein could seep further in to a comfortable position position of strength. On the other hand, the DUP’s worst fears may be realised and the SDLP electoral stagnation may become as entrenched as Sinn Fein’s electoral strength. It could be Upper Bann that proves if any of these thoughts are true.
