KEY POINTS
● Best performing council for the SDLP (25.5% share of first preference vote) and People Before Profit (5.9% share).
● Only council to elect an Aontú councillor in 2019.
● Only council where two parties are joint biggest (Sinn Féin and SDLP both on 11 seats each).
ABOUT THE COUNCIL AREA
While an earlier proposal would have fashioned a much larger North West regional council encompassing Magherafelt and parts of Limavady, the local government reform ended up merging the former Derry City Council and Strabane District Council to create the new 40-seat council. Northern Ireland can be divided into 890 ‘super output areas’ and these can be ranked in terms of multiple deprivations. 20 of the 100 most deprived SOAs in Northern Ireland fall within Derry and Strabane, covering 25% of the council’s population.
PREVIOUS ELECTIONS
● Sinn Féin suffered the biggest swing away from the party (6.0 percentage points) of any council at the last election.
● Independent candidates took 12.6% of the vote (the highest in Northern Ireland).
● Alliance gained their first two seats on the council in 2019.
● People Before Profit ran four candidates and got two elected.
SINCE 2019
● There were numerous resignations and co-options during the last council term.
● Cara Hunter and Sinead McLaughlin were co-opted into the Northern Ireland Assembly during 2020.
● Aontú’s Anne McClockey resigned from the council in November 2020.
● People Before Profit’s Eamonn McCann resigned from council in March 2021.
● Graham Warke resigned from the DUP to sit as an independent in June 2022.
● Derek Hussey was elected as a UUP councillor, was suspended from council for 15 months (during this period he resigned, a replacement was co-opted and then resigned to allow Hussey to return), was later suspended from the UUP and sat as an independent, but ultimately finished the term as a UUP councillor.
COMMENTARY
The SDLP and Sinn Féin currently have an equal number of councillors and are within a few percentage points of each other in the popular vote. This election will be quite a battle with Sinn Féin wanting to regain some of the seats they lost in 2019, and the SDLP seeking to consolidate their strong showing at other recent elections.
Four independent councillors were elected to Derry and Strabane District Council in 2019. Gary Donnelly topped the poll in The Moor and is seeking re-election. Sean Carr (formerly SDLP councillor in The Moor and latterly independent in Foyleside) pushed past Sinn Féin to win the final seat in his DEA by less than 20 votes. Carr is not standing this year opening up the possibility for an SDLP or Sinn Féin steal.
Another interesting dynamic is the impact of People Before Profit and Aontú. Both parties benefited from well-known local personalities Eamonn McCann and Anne McCloskey, both of whom subsequently stepped down from the council and are not running in May 2023.
The Faughan DEA sees two former DUP councillors running under different flags. Last year Ryan McCready (now UUP) came close to winning an Assembly seat from the DUP. Graham Warke quit his old party on the day his term as Mayor finished. He’s standing in this election as an independent. The pair are up against two new DUP candidates with the party particularly keen to win back these seats given the lack of fertile ground for gains elsewhere.
Alliance will be looking to build on their two-seat tally from 2019 and see the effect of the surge witnessed in more recent elections. Sperrin is a target. However, their share of the vote would need to double or triple in most of the other DEAs for them to become competitive to win additional seats.