KEY POINTS
Biggest unionist majority in Northern Ireland with the DUP holding more than a third of seats.
Best performing council for the TUV.
Just three of the forty councillors are from nationalist parties.
Second lowest turnout in Northern Ireland in 2019 (48.1%).
Bannside DEA recorded the lowest winning margin for a seat anywhere in NI in 2019 (1.06 votes).
ABOUT THE COUNCIL AREA
The new Mid and East Antrim Borough Council was formed from the old Ballymena, Carrickfergus and Larne Borough Councils. It’s the second smallest council in terms of population and registered electorate. Since late 2021, the MEA Council has been in the media spotlight over a number of issues. Its Chief Executive was suspended and then retired, and a series of interim appointments have since filled the role.
PREVIOUS ELECTIONS
DUP lost a seat but remained the largest party.
TUV held their total number of seats (5).
Alliance more than doubled their seats in 2019 to capture seven and lost out on an eighth seat in Bannside by just 1.06 votes in the final stage of the count.
Sinn Féin dropped from three to two seats.
Second lowest turnout (48.1%) of NI councils in 2019.
SINCE 2019
Alliance and the UUP each had a councillor who resigned and was replaced early in the council term.
John McDermott defected from the UUP to the DUP.
Two DUP councillors faced separate suspensions by the NI Local Government Commissioner for Standards after complaints about social media posts.
Alliance councillors Danny Donnelly and Patricia O’Lynn were elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
COMMENTARY
This council has the biggest unionist majority in Northern Ireland, with two thirds of seats and more than two thirds of the first preference votes. The DUP have always been the largest party on this council and have traditionally dominated the Assembly constituencies that this council area covers.
The second largest party by vote share is also within the unionist family: the UUP have seven councillors but are being strongly challenged for this spot by Alliance who also hold seven seats. Alliance will be hoping that Assembly election gains in North Antrim and East Antrim constituencies filter down and lead to gains at council level. Bannside is the only DEA in which they don’t have a councillor, having lost out by 1.06 votes to Sinn Féin in 2019.
For the TUV, MEA is fertile ground and the only council area where the party polls above 10% of the vote. Moreover, it has the only DEAs where the party gained a seat (Braid) and where it got the most votes of any party (Bannside). Despite this strength the party did lose ground in parts of the council and will be hoping the recent political debates about the Protocol, together with the turmoil around the governance of the MEA council, will help it gain ground.
Within nationalism, the picture is more static with just three councillors between Sinn Féin and the SDLP. Sinn Féin lost a seat in 2019 (to Alliance) and will be hoping to regain some lost ground. The SDLP only ran one candidate in 2019: Eugene Reid retained Declan O’Loan’s old seat in Ballymena. This year, the party is also running a candidate in Bannside.
In 2019, just four stages were needed to elect five councillors for the Knockagh DEA. It’s likely to be the fastest count again at this election. Ballymena had 14 candidates chasing seven seats in 2019. This year, there are just nine in the race.