All elected and, hands up, it was hard to see this coming – a spectacular twist in the tale in the last throes of this election with UUP transfers getting Richie McPhillips over the line ahead of Sinn Fein’s John Feely.
Clearly there’s no love lost locally between the two nationalist parties. In McPhillips victory speech the SDLP man talked of ‘standing for decency’ and pointedly declined to congratulate Sinn Fein’s Sean Lynch. He spoke of dirty tactics and said he was honoured to have received votes from the Protestant community in what he described as the true spirit of republicanism.
Make no mistake, this is a big setback for Sinn Fein and with its share of the vote down in almost every constituency across the North, the party must have real concerns that it is failing to mobilise voters, especially young voters, to the extent it used to. While still the highest in the North the turnout in FST is well down on previous years at just under 65 per cent and that in itself is hugely significant when winning margins are as tight as this.
But the big story of this election was that enough unionist voters ‘crossed over’ to the nationalist side to ultimately decide the outcome of this election. It has happened before but never to such effect.
With all the drama of the final count it’s important to remind ourselves that that these elections have confirmed Sinn Fein as the dominant party in Fermanagh South Tyrone by quite some margin – it just doesn’t feel like it after losing out on a third seat in such a dramatic fashion.
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