Gerry Carroll
By Anthony Neeson
As in every election there were winners and losers.
And it was the battle within nationalism in the North Assembly election where a number of high profile politicians found themselves scrapping for the final transfers to get them over the quota.
Some made it, others did not.
For the previous two Assembly elections in West Belfast, Sinn Féin returned a remarkable five MLAs.
However, under increasing pressure to retain those five seats the party came up against People Before Profit’s Gerry Carroll on the left, and the DUP’s Frank McCoubrey on the right.
McCoubrey was determined to get out the unionist vote in the constituency which is centered on the Protestant Shankill Road.
Also in the mix was the SDLP’s lone MLA for the area, Alex Attwood.
When the votes were counted on Friday afternoon Gerry Carroll took a whopping 8,000 votes, easily enough to get him over the line.
Sinn Féin’s five candidates were split between just over 19,000 votes.
It looked like one was going to fall short and that was Rosie McCorley.
But with four Sinn Féiners home after a grueling count that lasted the whole day, it came down to the last seat between the DUP’s McCoubrey and the SDLP’s Attwood.
Following transfers from Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey, the SDLP man scraped over the line with 87 votes to spare.
In Derry’s Foyle constituency both the SDLP and Sinn Féin were going for three seats apiece.
With the DUP retaining their seat no-one foresaw another People Before Profit candidate – this time Eamonn McCann, who first stood unsuccessfully for election back in 1969 – come home.
He did and by doing to left the main nationalist parties with two seats each.
One high profile casualty here was Sinn Féin’s chair of the Stormont Health committee, Maeve McLaughlin.
And then to Upper Bann where Sinn Féin were hoping to steal a seat from the former SDLP Deputy Leader Dolores Kelly in the predominately unionist constituency which takes in Lurgan and Portadown in County Armagh.
With Sinn Féin’s Catherine Seeley safely home it looked as though Sinn Féin had mismanaged their famous vote management, with Education Minister John O’Dowd short of a quota.
As other candidates were elected or excluded and their transfers came into play it looked like the Sinn Féin man was waving goodbye to Stormont.
But O'Dowd was to survive by the skin of his teeth, ending Kelly’s political career.
With the Greens also taking a seat in South Belfast at the expense of SDLP Deputy Leader Feargal McKinney – in a constituency which saw Sinn Féin’s Máirtín Ó Muilleoir top the poll in what would not normally be a traditionally strong Sinn Féin area – both main nationalist parties will go away from this election to hold separate post mortems.
And with unionism generally holding its own, there is a lot to consider.
