Here's a most interesting map of Northern Ireland

WorldbyStorm

Jun 6

From Irelandvotes.com and a visual representation of the results of this latest local elections.

Track down to see two more interesting maps, one by Council and the other the 2019 election results. Of course that doesn't tell the whole story, but consider that when Northern Ireland was established it was precisely this sort of outcome that Unionism sought to avoid.

For example:

The occasion of the May 1973 local elections also marked the re-introduction of PR-STV, which had been abolished for local government elections by the Northern Ireland government in 1922.

The structure of local elections was such that:

From 1921 until the suspension of devolved power in 1972 the system of local government in Northern Ireland remained largely unchanged from that introduced under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. As a consequence by the late 1960s for a population of some 1.5 million there were some 73 local authorities across Northern Ireland. The electoral franchise for local government elections continued to be based on certain practices abandoned in the rest of the United Kingdom by 1946. For instance in Northern Ireland the franchise was based on the ratepayer suffrage and the company vote. Ratepayer suffrage meant that, with some exceptions, only those who were owners or tenants of a dwelling (or their spouses) were entitled to vote in local government elections. Thus many adults who were lodgers or still living at their parents home did not receive a vote. It was estimated that in 1961 over a quarter of the parliamentary electorate were disfranchised at local elections. The company vote resulted in a number of company directors (property owners) being entitled to more than one vote.

Worth noting that at another electoral level proportional representation was abolished for the NI Parliament in the 1920s. Hardly a novel idea to suggest that structurally so much was done to constrain nationalists and indeed dissenting unionist voters and votes. Fascinating to look at the maps above and wonder what a more open and generous Unionism might have achieved had it had the capacity to do so.