Northern Ireland Assembly election, 1998
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All 108 seats to the Northern Ireland Assembly 55 seats needed for a majority |
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450px Percentage of seats gained by each of the party.
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The first elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly were held on Thursday 25 June 1998. Six members were elected by Single Transferable Vote from each of Northern Ireland's eighteen Westminster Parliamentary constituencies, giving a total of 108 MLAs, or Members of the Legislative Assembly.
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Results
The result was (first preference votes only):
File:Northernirelandassembly asof Jun 1998.PNG
Party |
Leader |
Seats |
% of seats |
Votes |
% of vote |
Rank |
|
UUP | David Trimble | 28 | 25.9% | 172,225 | 21.28% | 2 | |
SDLP | John Hume | 24 | 22.2% | 177,963 | 21.99% | 1 | |
DUP | Ian Paisley | 20 | 18.5% | 145,917 | 18.03% | 3 | |
Sinn Féin | Gerry Adams | 18 | 16.7% | 142,858 | 17.65% | 4 | |
Alliance | John Alderdice | 6 | 5.6% | 52,636 | 6.50% | 5 | |
UK Unionist | Robert McCartney | 5 | 4.6% | 36,541 | 4.52% | 6 | |
Independent Unionist | 3 | 2.8% | 24,339 | 3.00% | 7 | ||
PUP | Hugh Smyth | 2 | 1.9% | 20,634 | 2.55% | 8 | |
NI Women's Coalition | Monica McWilliams | 2 | 1.9% | 13,019 | 1.61% | 9 | |
Ulster Democratic | Gary McMichael | 0 | 8,651 | 1.07% | 10 | ||
Independent | 0 | 5,392 | 0.69% | * | |||
Labour Party NI | Malachi Curran | 0 | 2,729 | 0.34% | 11 | ||
Workers' Party | Tom French | 0 | 1,989 | 0.25% | 12 | ||
Conservative | William Hague | 0 | 1,835 | 0.23% | 13 | ||
Ulster Independence | Hugh Ross | 0 | 1,227 | 0.15% | 17 | ||
Natural Law | James Anderson | 0 | 832 | 0.10% | 18 | ||
Socialist Party | Joe Higgins | 0 | 789 | 0.10% | 19 | ||
Green (NI) | 0 | 710 | 0.09% | 20 | |||
Total | 108 | 100.0% | 786,132 | 100.0% |
All parties with over 500 votes listed. Electorate: 1,178,556; Turnout: 823,565 (69.88%); Spoiled votes: 13,248; Valid: 810,317.
- ¹ Independent candidates were ranked 14, 15 and 16; other independents won fewer than 500 votes.
Votes summary
Seats summary
Details
Although the SDLP won the most first preference votes, the Ulster Unionists won the most seats in the Assembly. This has been attributed[citation needed] to several reasons, including:
- Slightly different turnouts across the province, with the result that in the more staunchly unionist east fewer votes were required to elect an MLA than in the SDLP's heartlands in the west.
- The Ulster Unionists proved better at "vote balancing" whereby in the rounds of transfers their candidates were less likely to be eliminated earlier on.
- The Ulster Unionists proved better at attracting transfers from other parties (and due to the vote balancing mentioned above, were more likely to be in a position to benefit from this)
See also
- Use dmy dates from July 2012
- Use British English from July 2012
- Pages with broken file links
- Pages using infobox election with unknown parameters
- Articles with hCards
- Articles with unsourced statements from May 2011
- 1998 elections in the United Kingdom
- Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly
- 1998 in Northern Ireland