KEY POINTS
Lowest turnout by far (43.6%) of any council area in 2019.
Best performing council area for the Green Party (10.2%).
Biggest swing to the Alliance Party of any council area in 2019.
Lowest combined vote share (3.9%) for nationalism at last election.
ABOUT THE COUNCIL AREA
Ards and North Down Borough Council combines most of the old North Down District Council with the former Ards District Council. It wraps around two thirds of the Strangford Lough shoreline, with the whole peninsula from Portaferry up to Bangor, across to Holywood, down into Newtownards and – on the western shore – stretching down as far south as Killinchy. Demographically, it’s got the lowest proportion of under 40s and the highest proportion of over 65s of any council in Northern Ireland.
PREVIOUS ELECTIONS
The unionist majority of councillors dropped from 27 to 23 (out of 40) between the last two elections.
SDLP’s Joe Boyle holds the only nationalist seat on the council.
Has never elected a Sinn Féin councillor, with the two candidates picking up just 267 votes in 2019.
SINCE 2019
Two DUP councillors now sit as independents (Bill Keery and Wesley Irvine). Stephen Cooper (formerly TUV, and a very competitive candidate for Strangford in the 2022 Assembly election) is now an independent.
Carl McLean resigned from the UUP and, after a week as an independent, joined the DUP. Stephen Dunne (DUP) was co-opted to the Assembly in July 2021.
Andrew Muir was co-opted to the Assembly in December 2019. Connie Egan and Nick Mathison were elected to the Assembly in May 2022.
Rachel Woods has gone full circle, elected as a councillor for Holywood and Clandeboye in May 2019, being replaced (twice) while she was co-opted as a North Down MLA, and finally returning to council last September after losing her Assembly seat in May 2022.
Popular independent Jimmy Menagh died and was replaced by Steven Irvine. A number of other councillors resigned and were replaced.
COMMENTARY
Ards & North Down is a barren council for nationalism, with just one councillor from the SDLP (Joe Boyle, their only candidate in 2019 having run three in 2014) holding a seat. The combined nationalist vote was less than 4% in 2019, down from around 5% in 2014.
23 out of the 40 seats in the last election were taken by unionist candidates (down from 27 in 2014). The DUP have led the pack since the new authority was created. In 2019, the DUP shed seats to the Alliance Party, losing vote share in every DEA except Ards Peninsula. The most pronounced drop was a 5-percentage point fall in Holywood and Clandeboye.
Support for the UUP also fell back in 2019, losing one seat. The two main unionist parties fell prey to the Alliance surge, who gained three seats and a nine-percentage point swing to them on first preferences to control a quarter of the council’s 40 seats. On paper, Alliance’s best chance for growth is by picking up a third seat in Bangor West where they polled strongly in 2019. Three candidates are being run in Bangor Central (where their single candidate won her seat with 1.3 quotas of first preferences in 2019) with a chance of winning two.
More than a third of the council chamber are ‘other’ rather than unionist or nationalist. It’s a Green heartland and the seed of the party’s 2007 breakthrough to the Assembly. Winning 10% of first preference votes in 2019 was their strongest showing anywhere in Northern Ireland. The party holds three council seats locally (all over or just a handful of votes shy of a quota) and only missed out from picking up a fourth by 71 votes in Bangor East & Donaghadee at the last election. However, watch to see whether the Greens lose significant vote share to Alliance in a repeat of the 2022 Assembly election.
Ards and North Down is a fertile ground for independents, with three elected in 2019 and a total of six outgoing councillors now designating as independent at the time of writing. Jimmy Menagh topped the poll in Newtownards with more than two quotas of first preferences in 2019. His replacement Steven Irvine is running this May.