nitory
Conservative
Posts: 941 
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Post by nitory on Sept 6, 2016 2:48:21 GMT
Starting with the positives; Belfast going down to 3 seat is drawn as expected, East Antrim no longer takes in half of the Glens, erm.... Foyle is compact.
What the hell is West Down??? Banbridge to Carryduff/Newtownbreda is an atrocity that looks just to be the leftovers from all the other districts. Banbridge in my view belongs with Craigavon but any other configuration would have been better (coincidentally I was playing around with Banbridge in a South Down constituency earlier today).
Upper Bann and Blackwater is something Sinn Fein would draw in a gerrymander. Both Dungannon and Lurgan are bizarrely split with Waringstown ward - heavily Protestant Lurgan outskirts in West Down instead.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2016 4:00:15 GMT
It's glorious!!
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Sept 6, 2016 6:56:05 GMT
Reading the report, the motivation for "West Down" seems to be to respect the Down county boundary:
I don't like the way that Belfast's southern suburbs have been split between it and "Strangford" (can't that silly name be put to rest?). I think Newtownbreda etc. would really be better in a Belfast seat (which probably means a four-seat Belfast) but splitting them between two largely rural seats seems particularly bad.
I'm a bit surprised by the amount of change to Fermanagh & South Tyrone, which was in quota after adjustment to new ward boundaries. The situation around Dungannon looks weird.
County Antrim looks OK, though Ballymena is right at the fringe of the seat in which it's the main town. In spite of my dislike of "Mid" names, I think that might be better called "Mid Antrim" than "West Antrim".
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 6, 2016 8:41:02 GMT
I hadn't come up with a plan for NI that I was happy with but here's an attempt to improve on these proposals   I would probably prefer to stick with 4 Belfast seats but the logic of going down to 3 is inescabable and you have to go very far out now to get four seats up to quota. Foyle and Belfast East are unchanged from the commission's plan. Belfast SW retains Beechmount and Clonard but loses Central to Belfast North which also takes in the whole of the Rathcoole area while losing Collinbridge to South Antrim. In the West I totally agree with YL that crossing the Blackwater is unnecessary and F&ST can be retained in it's existing, slightly modified form, gaining two wards from the former Omagh district. The Coalisland area and the southern part of the old Cookstown district then joins with most of West Tyrone to form North Tyrone (or whatever). The Glenshane seat then retains (relative to the current Mid Ulster) Cookstown and includes the whole of the old Magharafelt and Limavady districts (plus rural Derry) but contains none of Coleraine. Dariada then becomes basically the whole of the former districts of Coleraine, Moyle and Ballymoney and is now wholly contained with in the Causeway Coast and Glens seat. Antrim Mid or West then becomes much more centred on Ballymena, including the whole of the former district of that name and and exchanges the Newtownabbey wards for Antrim Town. Antrim East also moves out of the mess created in Newtownabbey and takes the Ballyclare area. Most of the Newtownabbey/Glengormley area is then reunited in South Antrim Minor changes to North Down, Strangford (but brings together all of Newtownbreda and Carryduff), South Down and Newry & Armagh with Upper Bann continuing to cover the whole of the former Craigavon district with one ward gained from N&A |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Sept 6, 2016 8:42:06 GMT
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 6, 2016 9:46:07 GMT
This is how you could change my plan to have four Belfast seats  Belfast North takes in most of the built up area of Newtownabbey, loses Ardoyne, New Lodge and Waterworks to Belfast West. Belfast South moves out to Moneyreagh and Drumbo and Belfast East has to take in Holywood. North Down then moves all the way down the Ards peninsula. Antrim South loses all the Newtownabbey element and takes in the southern wards of Lisburn. Probably stick to the name Lagan Valley or rename Lisburn. This leaves two seats in what's left of South Down/West Down/Strangford. An East/West division is most logical here but would be controversial. Both seats would be pretty balanced with Down South or West (Banbridge, Newcastle, Kilkeel) probably leaning SDLP but with the potential to go Unionist on a split vote while East or Mid Down (Newtownards, Downpatrick) leaning DUP but again with the potential to be marginal |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 6, 2016 9:47:28 GMT
Just noticed Kilkeel is in the wrong seat which messes up the numbers. You'd have to put Ballyward and Dromara into East Down
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Post by Arthur Figgis on Sept 6, 2016 9:55:02 GMT
Just noticed Kilkeel is in the wrong seat which messes up the numbers. You'd have to put Ballyward and Dromara into East Down I thought it was a deliberate ploy to save us from being in the same seat as Annalong.  |
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Post by greenhert on Sept 6, 2016 10:41:19 GMT
Reading the report, the motivation for "West Down" seems to be to respect the Down county boundary: I don't like the way that Belfast's southern suburbs have been split between it and "Strangford" (can't that silly name be put to rest?). I think Newtownbreda etc. would really be better in a Belfast seat (which probably means a four-seat Belfast) but splitting them between two largely rural seats seems particularly bad. I'm a bit surprised by the amount of change to Fermanagh & South Tyrone, which was in quota after adjustment to new ward boundaries. The situation around Dungannon looks weird. County Antrim looks OK, though Ballymena is right at the fringe of the seat in which it's the main town. In spite of my dislike of "Mid" names, I think that might be better called "Mid Antrim" than "West Antrim". A good motivation, but unfortunately under the rules for this review it is not possible to entirely avoid disrespecting traditional county boundaries with regards to new Northern Irish constituencies (I tried it myself and worked out that at least one county boundary would have to be crossed, the Londonderry-Antrim boundary). I do however have quite a few better alternatives to these provisional recommendations, examples including Craigavon (aka North Armagh, which includes only County Armagh wards and no County Londonderry wards), and Belfast South East (partly to make sure no Belfast constituency has any non-Belfast wards in it and to effect minimum change in Belfast North). |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 6, 2016 10:45:32 GMT
It doesn't strike me as a huge achievement to have created a Craigavon/North Armagh seat without including and wards from County Londonderry. Creating such a seat which did would be a more impressive feat..
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Sept 6, 2016 10:47:20 GMT
Such a seat would have to be called 'Lough Neagh Banks'.
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Post by Arthur Figgis on Sept 6, 2016 11:57:51 GMT
Such a seat would have to be called 'Lough Neagh Banks'. Bann Banks? Which sounds like a Corbynista slogan. |
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Post by ajthomson on Sept 6, 2016 12:51:46 GMT
My thoughts:
a) Belfast East might well flip on 2015 figures. Dundonald, which leaves, is heavily DUP; the territory coming in from Belfast South is more SDLP/Alliance-ish for the most part, though there's a unionist council estate in Belvoir as well. in practice, much would depend on SDLP supporters voting tactically, though.
b) Belfast North West is a hard call. Yes, Belfast North loses Rathcoole, but I would have thought turnout there is probably lower than elsewhere in the seat, and the new seat, in addition to the lower Falls, would also include the lower and upper Shankill. It could be very close on paper. We also don't know if Shankill voters would be more likely to turn out if they lived in a marginal seat, but I'd be surprised if they didn't.
c) The mashing up of Glengormley is a mess, ditto Newtownbreda/Carryduff. And county boundaries or no county boundaries, it's silly to remove Hillhall and Blaris from the rest of Lisburn. (I quite like the idea of a West Down seat, with the A1 running through the heart of it, but not as it's drawn here.)
d) I didn't see Upper Bann & Blackwater coming. SF will like it, but a gain for them there is by no means a given. I've not looked at the census figures, but I would have thought it will be more or less a 50/50 split between the two communities (the old Craigavon was, Dungannon is, and Coalisland is to some extent cancelled out by Loughgall). In practice, there might well be a unionist pact, whereas past form would suggest there wouldn't be a nationalist one.
In general, I like Pete's 3-Belfast map, and consider it better than the BCNI's proposals. On the other hand, if the Commission are reluctant to go back to the drawing board, and only minor/moderate tweaks are likely, I'd suggest the following:
1. Move Newtownstewart from FST to North Tyrone, as it's on the main road between Strabane and Omagh. (I don't know the area that well, but its inclusion in FST seems odd for that reason.)
2. Move Mullaghbane from North Tyrone to UBB, to avoid splitting Dungannon.
3. Move all of Newtownbreda/Four Winds into Strangford and all of Carryduff, plus Saintfield and Ballynahinch, into West Down. It means that Newtownbreda will be in a different seat from Carryduff, but that's better than splitting both of them.
4. Move Hillhall and Blaris from West Down to South Antrim, to avoid splitting Lisburn.
And to get round the mash-up of Newtownabbey, I would suggest the following arrangement for West, East and South Antrim:
a. Move the Antrim east coast, from Carnlough, through Larne, to Whitehead, to West Antrim and rename that seat 'Mid Antrim'.
b. Move Ballyclare and all of Glengormley, save Mallusk and the two wards in Belfast North, to East Antrim and rename that seat 'South East Antrim'.
c. Rename South Antrim 'South West Antrim' (apart from losing Hightown to SE Antrim, and gaining the two Lisburn wards, it would be unchanged).
This arrangement would mean a suburban seat around Newtownabbey (SE Antrim) and a rural seat with links between the two strongly Ulster-Scots towns of Ballymena and Larne (Mid Antrim), rather than two seats that are a bit of both.
A final thought: if 'Dalriada' survives, will it be pronounced 'Dal-REE-ah-da' or 'Dal-ree-AH-da'? The former is correct, I think, but in my experience the latter tends to be how alumni of Dalriada School, Ballymoney, pronounce it.
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Post by afleitch on Sept 6, 2016 14:05:27 GMT
Map seems to broadly respect the old six counties.
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 16,058
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Post by Sibboleth on Sept 6, 2016 14:17:34 GMT
I think this sums up the Review neatly:
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 6, 2016 15:40:23 GMT
I wonder what potential there is for the SDLP to squeeze the Unionist and Alliance vote in the parts of SW Belfast coming in from Belfast South. Probably not enough to make a difference as it was 25 years ago as they're now so weak in areas west of the M1
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Post by gamblingguru on Sept 6, 2016 17:38:52 GMT
So much for thinking that not much change was required. I think a lot of the models on here were much better - with either a 3 and 4 seat Belfast.
Although it's a neutral review it couldn't have fallen any better for SF or any worse for unionists if they had tried to gerrymander!
Current 11 Unionist and 7 Nationalist seats would probably be 7 Unionist, 9 Nationalist and 1 Alliance on 2015 votes!!
A lot of commentators including Nicholas Whyte have put the Upper Bann and Blackwater constituency to DUP but I'm pretty sure there will be a nationalist majority and this will be 1 of 7 SF seats.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Sept 6, 2016 18:02:59 GMT
Nicholas Whyte's take is here for those who haven't already seen it. |
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Post by ajthomson on Sept 6, 2016 18:50:24 GMT
Some census statistics on community breakdown would be useful here. I've cobbled together some old ones based on the 2001 census and the old wards as they approximate to the new seats. It's not likely to be very accurate, but fwiw here are the seats in descending order of Catholic population(%), which I've treated as a yardstick for the likely nationalist vote; changes from the old seat are also included (with the old seat named in brackets if there's been a change of name):
74.5 Foyle (-1.2)
71.9 Belfast South West (-9.3, Belfast West)
70.7 South Down (-0.3)
68.7 North Tyrone (+0.9, West Tyrone)
63.4 Newry & Armagh (-1.9)
58.2 Fermanagh & South Tyrone (+2.6)
56.9 Glenshane (-8.4, Mid Ulster)
56.3 Upper Bann & Blackwater (+13.4, Upper Bann)
51.5 Belfast North West (+7.5, Belfast North)
32.3 Dalriada (-7.8, East Londonderry)
25.5 South Antrim (-2.6)
20.4 Strangford (+3.7)
20.4 West Antrim (-7.0, North Antrim)
20.2 West Down (+6.6, Lagan Valley)
17.2 East Antrim (-2.6)
15.6 Belfast East (+7.2)
10.4 North Down (-1.3)
The interesting seats are the four in the 50s, as they are the sorts of seats that a single unionist candidate might win against split nationalist opposition. In the case of FST they would probably struggle to do so, given that the UUP majority in the current FST last year was just 1.0%, and the Catholic population in the new FST would be 2.6% higher. If FST is typical of rural seats in terms of a single unionist candidate and tactical voting by nationalists, Glenshane and Upper Bann & Blackwater would be very close, and much could depend on the candidate. On these figures, the DUP might hold Belfast North West, given that I can't foresee any circumstances where there'd be a nationalist pact there, but again it would be very tight.
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Post by gamblingguru on Sept 6, 2016 18:53:32 GMT
A few quick walk rounds of likely stormont seats on the new boundaries, down to 5 seats each so 85 total.
E Antrim would be 4 unionists and 1 Alliance, 3 DUP and 1 UUP on 2016 votes. The loss of Glens is not offset by the Glengormley wards and quota now 16.7%.
Dalriada would be 4 unionists, and 1 Nationalist, probably SF. ( Nationalists just short of 2nd)
Glenshane would be 3 Nationalists, 2SF and 1SDLP with 2 Unionists.
Foyle is largely the same so 2 SDLP, 2SF and 1DUP is likely
North Tyrone is harder to call. It's is slightly more nationalist than the old W Tyrone and will be very close for the final seat between the 4th Nationalist and 2nd Unionist. I would just call 3 SF 1SDLP 1 DUP.
FST would split 3 nationalist, 2 Unionist with SDLP up against the 3rd SF and probably 1 each for DUP and UUP.
UB&B would split 2 SF 1 SDLP and the 2 Unionists could be shared with DUP looking to win both.
N&A would, like N Tyrone, be tight between 2nd Unionist and 4th Nationalist. Here I'd call 2SF 1SDLP 1 DUP and 1UUP
S Down is largely unchanged and would go 2 each for SDLP and SF with DUP getting 1.
W Down would be heavily Unionist with 4 seats but the final seat could go to Alliance or a Nationalist with both having less than a quota. I'd call a Nationalist here as SDLP have the edge on SF.
Strangford has almost certainly has an SDLP seat now. Alliance should be safe too so unionists down 2 here to 3 seats despite having about 2/3 of the vote. It would go 2 DUP and 1UUP.
N Down gains a strongly DUP area in Dundonald but not sure if it will be enough to retain 3. 2 DUP 1 Alliance 1 UUP and Greens to just edge out 3rd DUP.
E Belfast won't have enought nationalist votes for a seat so should break 2 DUP 2 Alliance and 1UUP.
SW Belfast is difficult to call. Unionists combined are well under quota but Alliance + Greens even further below. Definite 2SF 1 SDLP, and PBP should retain their seat on 2016 figures, with possibly the DUP picking up enough transfers to stay ahead of Alliance and 3rd SF.
NW Belfast is much easier. 2SF 2DUP and 1 SDLP.
S Antrim has just over a quota of Nationalist votes just favouring SF, with Alliance under a quota but should benefit from transfers. There are not 4 unionists quotas here so 2 DUP, 1 UUP 1 Alliance and maybe just 1SDLP as they may overtake SF on transfers.
Finally W Antrim. There is about enough for a Nationalist quota here but Alliance will be below and will struggle unless SDLP transfer heavily and therefore put the SF seat in trouble. There a 4 unionists quotas here so 2 DUP 1UUP and I'll call 1 TUV and 1SF.
Total 28 DUP 12 UUP and 2 other unionists. 21 SF 14 SDLP and 1 PBP. 6 Alliance and 1Green.
I may have given SDLP a couple of breaks whigh will more likely go SF but overall unionists lose the most and drop just below a majority in Stormont. DUP would remain largest party.
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