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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jan 30, 2018 20:32:00 GMT
Basically just 8 wards transferred each way - around 22k voters. So it will make both seats less monolithically Nationalist/Unionist but hardly make either marginal  |
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Post by An Sionnach Flannbhuí on Jan 30, 2018 22:23:40 GMT
Downpatrick I think is now 87% Catholic while Banbridge, well, is not; are you that Strangford/Mid Down seat is Unionist?
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Post by phoenixparnell on Jan 31, 2018 2:11:21 GMT
As others have said, Mid Down is the only obviously bad seat in the proposals. I note that splitting South Down and Mid Down on an east-west axis would produce seats with much better internal links, though with more electors moved. But would it be to anybody's partisan advantage to suggest that? Weird - I just came onto this thread to say exactly the same thing. Most (ie about 2/3rd)of the Eastern seat (which you'd still probably call Mid Down) would come from the proposed Mid Down with about a third from South Down and the other seat would be vice versa. Basically swapping Downpatrick area for Banbridge and Dromore. So I'd guess the East seat would be less solidly Unionist but still safe - could cause some objections in Downpatrick I suppose. The other seat I suppose could be vulnerable to a united Unionist candidate given the split nature of the Nationalist vote but would be a long shot. It could end up looking like an attempted gerrymander though, even though it makes much more sense based on communications. Newtownards and Downpatrick in the same seat would still be odd I've also came to the conclusion that this should happen. Newtownards and Downpatrick are slightly jarring on first glance, but much less so than Newtownards and Banbridge which almost everyone of any political background seems to find bizarre. It would also have the benefit of Strangford not having to be renamed, and the village of Strangford actually falling in the constituency. Similarly the south-western constituency could retain the name South Down. Banbridge was part of South Down until 1983 so it makes some sense for it to fall there. Mid Down is getting a lot of heat but i think this solution is potentially agreeable to all sides. But the revised proposals are simply dreadful west of the Bann. That's where i would suspect the real fight will happen. BCNI have already thrown out one set of proposals so i suspect they will come under pressure to do it again. That or come up with some sort of hybrid of the 2 sets of proposals. Maybe a 4 seat Belfast, that retains Lagan Valley, Upper Bann & Blackwater etc |
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Post by ajthomson on Jan 31, 2018 2:27:26 GMT
Basically just 8 wards transferred each way - around 22k voters. So it will make both seats less monolithically Nationalist/Unionist but hardly make either marginal If one goes down the blunt-stick sectarian-headcount route, then the following figures from the 2001 census might be helpful. I don't have the 2011 figures, unfortunately, and the ward boundaries are a bit different as well, so it's a bit approximate: Commission's Mid Down: 80.2% Prot, 15.8% Cath, 4.0% Oth Commission's South Down: 68.7% Cath, 29.6% Prot, 1.7% Oth Alternative Mid Down: 64.8% Prot, 31.4% Cath, 3.8% Oth Alternative South Down: 55.3% Cath, 42.9% Prot, 1.8% Oth The alternative Mid Down would be safely unionist. The alternative South Down might be a target for a single unionist candidate, but the most likely consequence of that would be to coalesce the nationalist vote behind SF, who would then hold the seat (shades of FST). Even so, it's a bit of a surprise that the DUP didn't propose the idea (maybe too obviously an attempt at a gerrymander, and therefore a risk to the rest of their counterproposal?) I would imagine that the real interest might be the impact on assembly seats, although more in terms of people than numbers: in practice all that would happen is probably that the alternative Mid Down would have one unionist MLA fewer than the commission's Mid Down, and one more nationalist, while the opposite would happen in South Down. But I'm not 'on the ground' enough to comment with any authority. |
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YL
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Post by YL on Jan 31, 2018 7:59:10 GMT
Sectarian headcount gerrymanders in Northern Ireland are disgusting, people. Mid Down is getting a lot of heat but i think this solution is potentially agreeable to all sides. But the revised proposals are simply dreadful west of the Bann. That's where i would suspect the real fight will happen. BCNI have already thrown out one set of proposals so i suspect they will come under pressure to do it again. That or come up with some sort of hybrid of the 2 sets of proposals. Maybe a 4 seat Belfast, that retains Lagan Valley, Upper Bann & Blackwater etc Can you elaborate on the badness west of the Bann? I note that Dungiven has been split between the extended Mid Ulster and "West Tyrone" seats which I imagine will not go down well; what else is bad? |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jan 31, 2018 8:14:14 GMT
Sectarian headcount gerrymanders in Northern Ireland are disgusting, people. No-one was discussing a gerrymander. The purpose of redrawing Mid/South Down along a different axis was to better reflect lines of communication. The sectarian headcount came as an after-thought because it's necessary to consider the partisan effect of any changes, actually to avoid the charge of gerrymandering - this is a fact of life. ajthompson's figures show the effects of what I'm proposing are likely to be mostly neutral I think he objects to the fact that Upper Bann survives relatively unmolested and that Londonderry East is now extended to the East rather than the South and is also preserved as a Unionist seat. In short it is bad because it undoes the Nationalist gerrymander that was proposed initially |
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YL
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Post by YL on Jan 31, 2018 8:21:07 GMT
Sectarian headcount gerrymanders in Northern Ireland are disgusting, people. No-one was discussing a gerrymander. The purpose of redrawing Mid/South Down along a different axis was to better reflect lines of communication. The sectarian headcount came as an after-thought because it's necessary to consider the partisan effect of any changes, actually to avoid the charge of gerrymandering - this is a fact of life. ajthompson's figures show the effects of what I'm proposing are likely to be mostly neutral On this occasion, I wasn't talking about your proposal. |
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Post by phoenixparnell on Jan 31, 2018 10:47:02 GMT
Mid Down is getting a lot of heat but i think this solution is potentially agreeable to all sides. But the revised proposals are simply dreadful west of the Bann. That's where i would suspect the real fight will happen. BCNI have already thrown out one set of proposals so i suspect they will come under pressure to do it again. That or come up with some sort of hybrid of the 2 sets of proposals. Maybe a 4 seat Belfast, that retains Lagan Valley, Upper Bann & Blackwater etc Can you elaborate on the badness west of the Bann? I note that Dungiven has been split between the extended Mid Ulster and "West Tyrone" seats which I imagine will not go down well; what else is bad? The Fermanagh South Tyrone they are now suggesting is very similar to the existing version. At first glance that sounds reasonable enough but the existing constituency is terrible. There has (rightly) been a lot of controversy over the unreasonableness of Mid Down being based around Newtownards and Bandridge. According to Google there is 38 miles between those 2 settlements, and the journey takes 56 minutes. FST is based around Dungannon and Enniskillen. The distance between those towns is 43 miles, while the journey takes 59 minutes by car. And those are only the 2 main centres. It is over 90km from one end of the constituency to the other. The originally proposed new boundary also respected the Derry-Tyrone boundary. People in that part of the world define themselves by Gaelic football. Children and young people play. Older people run the club, serve on the committee, mark out the pitch, clean the dressing rooms etc. The clubhouse bar is the meeting place in most villages. If anyone is having a significant birthday the typical place for the party is the function room in the GAA clubhouse. The building blocks of society are parish and county. Obviously it is nationalist territory, but in protestant villages you can basically swap the GAA clubhouse for the Orange Hall. The Orange Order also stick to the county lines in their organisation. And then you have Causeway. Somehow they have come to the conclusion that the outskirts of Derry and the Glens of Antrim belong together. In a way it would almost be better that it was nefariously gerrymandered than that it was someone thinking that was a good idea. |
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iain
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Post by iain on Jan 31, 2018 13:06:32 GMT
How do people think these boundaries would affect the assembly?
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Chris from Brum
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Post by Chris from Brum on Jan 31, 2018 13:19:20 GMT
Fermanagh and South Tyrone isn't "obvious nationalist territory", it had a unionist MP less than a year ago. And was for many years the seat of Ken Maginnis, who no-one would describe as a nationalist. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2018 13:28:38 GMT
Fermanagh and South Tyrone isn't "obvious nationalist territory", it had a unionist MP less than a year ago. And was for many years the seat of Ken Maginnis, who no-one would describe as a nationalist. or a Liberal....  |
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Post by phoenixparnell on Jan 31, 2018 13:41:32 GMT
The Fermanagh South Tyrone they are now suggesting is very similar to the existing version. At first glance that sounds reasonable enough but the existing constituency is terrible. There has (rightly) been a lot of controversy over the unreasonableness of Mid Down being based around Newtownards and Bandridge. According to Google there is 38 miles between those 2 settlements, and the journey takes 56 minutes. FST is based around Dungannon and Enniskillen. The distance between those towns is 43 miles, while the journey takes 59 minutes by car. And those are only the 2 main centres. It is over 90km from one end of the constituency to the other. The originally proposed new boundary also respected the Derry-Tyrone boundary. People in that part of the world define themselves by Gaelic football. Children and young people play. Older people run the club, serve on the committee, mark out the pitch, clean the dressing rooms etc. The clubhouse bar is the meeting place in most villages. If anyone is having a significant birthday the typical place for the party is the function room in the GAA clubhouse. The building blocks of society are parish and county. Obviously it is nationalist territory, but in protestant villages you can basically swap the GAA clubhouse for the Orange Hall. The Orange Order also stick to the county lines in their organisation. And then you have Causeway. Somehow they have come to the conclusion that the outskirts of Derry and the Glens of Antrim belong together. In a way it would almost be better that it was nefariously gerrymandered than that it was someone thinking that was a good idea. Fermanagh and South Tyrone isn't "obvious nationalist territory", it had a unionist MP less than a year ago. Apologies if there is any confusion there. I was refering to the Tyrone-Derry boundary as nationalist territory. What would have been North Tyrone & Glenshane in the original proposals |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jan 31, 2018 13:54:52 GMT
You'd also need to shift Newcastle, I think (always assuming you leave everything else unchanged, which isn't a given). Though I presume that still wouldn't shift the needle enough? No Newcastle would still be in South/West Down - the Mid seat would go as far West as Hillsborough Yes, but I was thinking of swapping the Lisburn wards for the area around Newcastle - hence making the divide more strictly east/west. Looking at the figures, I suspect that would keep the eastern seat safe unionist, but possibly make the western seat marginal? |
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Post by ajthomson on Jan 31, 2018 14:49:10 GMT
No-one was discussing a gerrymander. The purpose of redrawing Mid/South Down along a different axis was to better reflect lines of communication. The sectarian headcount came as an after-thought because it's necessary to consider the partisan effect of any changes, actually to avoid the charge of gerrymandering - this is a fact of life. ajthompson's figures show the effects of what I'm proposing are likely to be mostly neutral On this occasion, I wasn't talking about your proposal. I agree that sectarian headcount gerrymanders are disgusting. But the issue here is as Pete describes it: trying to work out what the partisan effects of the alternative boundary changes might be. The census community breakdown is (unfortunately) still a good way to give a likely breakdown - in broad terms - of the unionist/nationalist split. Lest there be any doubt, my surprise that the DUP hadn’t suggested an east-west split of Down was certainly not a suggestion that they ought to have done so, but rather a reflection of my (low) opinion of the DUP. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jan 31, 2018 15:09:58 GMT
No Newcastle would still be in South/West Down - the Mid seat would go as far West as Hillsborough Yes, but I was thinking of swapping the Lisburn wards for the area around Newcastle - hence making the divide more strictly east/west. Looking at the figures, I suspect that would keep the eastern seat safe unionist, but possibly make the western seat marginal? Yes - looking at Aidan's figures, the whole area of the two seats is about 54/43 Protestant/Catholic and the geographical distribution is such that if you rotate the boundary enough in the way you describe you can reach the point where both seats have a small Unionist majority or plurality. What you're suggesting probably doesn't quite do it but would possibly be enough to deliver two Unionist seats especially given the division of the nationalist vote in this area |
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YL
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Post by YL on Jan 31, 2018 17:48:57 GMT
Can you elaborate on the badness west of the Bann? I note that Dungiven has been split between the extended Mid Ulster and "West Tyrone" seats which I imagine will not go down well; what else is bad? The Fermanagh South Tyrone they are now suggesting is very similar to the existing version. At first glance that sounds reasonable enough but the existing constituency is terrible. There has (rightly) been a lot of controversy over the unreasonableness of Mid Down being based around Newtownards and Bandridge. According to Google there is 38 miles between those 2 settlements, and the journey takes 56 minutes. FST is based around Dungannon and Enniskillen. The distance between those towns is 43 miles, while the journey takes 59 minutes by car. And those are only the 2 main centres. It is over 90km from one end of the constituency to the other. The originally proposed new boundary also respected the Derry-Tyrone boundary. People in that part of the world define themselves by Gaelic football. Children and young people play. Older people run the club, serve on the committee, mark out the pitch, clean the dressing rooms etc. The clubhouse bar is the meeting place in most villages. If anyone is having a significant birthday the typical place for the party is the function room in the GAA clubhouse. The building blocks of society are parish and county. Obviously it is nationalist territory, but in protestant villages you can basically swap the GAA clubhouse for the Orange Hall. The Orange Order also stick to the county lines in their organisation. And then you have Causeway. Somehow they have come to the conclusion that the outskirts of Derry and the Glens of Antrim belong together. In a way it would almost be better that it was nefariously gerrymandered than that it was someone thinking that was a good idea. Thanks for the reply. I think, given the presumption in the rules in favour of retaining existing constituencies, it's hard to argue strongly against the retention of FST in something like its existing form, given that it's been around in more or less that form since 1983. Yes, it's geographically large, but the area is thinly populated and at least Dungannon and Enniskillen are well connected by the A4 (something you can't really say about Newtownards and Banbridge). I've some sympathy, though, with wanting to keep West Tyrone in Tyrone. I don't think it's ideal either, but you could move the three Co. Derry wards moved into it into Mid Ulster (which might then end up getting called Glenshane again...) instead, and move Oaklands, Pomeroy and Donaghmore into West Tyrone. The problem is that Mid Ulster/Glenshane then ends up stretching from Coalisland to the outskirts of Derry, but at least Dungiven stays in one piece. (If you did that, you might want to swap a few more Co. Derry wards around to stop the Causeway seat going so far west.) |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jan 31, 2018 18:22:35 GMT
FST is odd, but there's no better alternative - Fermanagh has to be combined with part of Tyrone, and if you try to combine it with Omagh then you cut Omagh off from its eastern hinterland.
Similarly, I don't buy the argument about the Derry-Tyrone border. You simply can't fit three seats into Tyrone and Fermanagh, and the area round the Glenshane pass has got plenty of links to north Tyrone. And I certainly don't think you can say it fits better in Mid Ulster than Pomeroy et al. do.
However, splitting Dungiven is completely unnecessary. You could move it all into West Tyrone and actually improve electoral equality.
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Post by phoenixparnell on Feb 20, 2018 21:01:27 GMT
FST is odd, but there's no better alternative - Fermanagh has to be combined with part of Tyrone, and if you try to combine it with Omagh then you cut Omagh off from its eastern hinterland. Similarly, I don't buy the argument about the Derry-Tyrone border. You simply can't fit three seats into Tyrone and Fermanagh, and the area round the Glenshane pass has got plenty of links to north Tyrone. And I certainly don't think you can say it fits better in Mid Ulster than Pomeroy et al. do. However, splitting Dungiven is completely unnecessary. You could move it all into West Tyrone and actually improve electoral equality. There will always be difficulties setting a boundary in this area given the geography of the border with the Republic, and the population of Fermanagh makes it impossible to respect the Fermanagh-Tyrone boundary. But the provisional proposals from BCNI managed to respect the Derry-Tyrone boundary, and achieved a fairly neat division of Tyrone whilst not cutting Omagh off from it's hinterland. The population there means some part of Tyrone will have to be placed elsewhere. What could be more obvious that Dungannon being placed with Portadown and Lurgan on the M1 corridor? Carving Dungannon in 2 as they originally did was obviously daft, but all that was required to remedy that was moving Mullaghmore from North Tyrone to Upper Bann & Blackwater, and then make up the difference by moving Newtonstewart from FST to North Tyrone, where it probably fits better anyway. Thanks for the reply. I think, given the presumption in the rules in favour of retaining existing constituencies, it's hard to argue strongly against the retention of FST in something like its existing form, given that it's been around in more or less that form since 1983. Yes, it's geographically large, but the area is thinly populated and at least Dungannon and Enniskillen are well connected by the A4 (something you can't really say about Newtownards and Banbridge). I've some sympathy, though, with wanting to keep West Tyrone in Tyrone. I don't think it's ideal either, but you could move the three Co. Derry wards moved into it into Mid Ulster (which might then end up getting called Glenshane again...) instead, and move Oaklands, Pomeroy and Donaghmore into West Tyrone. The problem is that Mid Ulster/Glenshane then ends up stretching from Coalisland to the outskirts of Derry, but at least Dungiven stays in one piece. (If you did that, you might want to swap a few more Co. Derry wards around to stop the Causeway seat going so far west.) I've been working on a hybrid of the 2 set of proposals which is a compromise I'd be hopeful BCNI might go for. 4 Belfast constituencies which are as per the revised proposals, with the east based around the revised proposals, but with the west based around the original proposals. It also retains Lagan Valley and sorts out the Mid-Down mess with the east-west split mentioned above  |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Sept 10, 2018 12:12:34 GMT
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Post by boondock on Sept 10, 2018 17:59:06 GMT
So no change really from the last controversial proposal. At least next time we dont need to bother with the boundary commision NI and just ask Dodds directly to get out his crayons and mark his wish list.
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