With plenty more votes still to be counted today, initial indications last night were that the status quo would prevail in the elections for the North’s 11 new “super councils”, but with a few surprises here and there.
The DUP and Sinn Féin will maintain their dominant position in Northern politics, although the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party appeared to be making some inroads at local level.
This may cause concern to the DUP and UUP, especially if the trend is a sign TUV leader Jim Allister will perform well in the European election, to be counted on Monday.
However, outgoing MEPs Martina Anderson (SF), Diane Dodds (DUP) and Jim Nicholson (UUP) are still expected to hold their seats, but the TUV local performance will raise some concern that Allister could at least make life a little difficult for either Nicholson or Dodds on Monday.
Of the leaders of the UUP and SDLP, Mike Nesbitt and Dr Alasdair McDonnell, it seems Nesbitt is likely to be happiest, as the UUP vote was holding up well in local polls.
Threat Three SDLP seats in its normal stronghold of Derry were under threat last night. Any general replication for the SDLP in the other 10 councils would raise concerns for the party in the European poll, where West Belfast MLA Alex Attwood is the candidate.
All such observations carry a serious health warning as at the time of writing there weren’t enough results to draw specific conclusions.
What did appear clear is that the Alliance is likely to continue to hold the balance of power on Belfast City Council. One trend that will cause concern to DUP leader Peter Robinson was the Alliance performing well in East Belfast, despite the furore over the Belfast Council decision, with the support of Alliance, to restrict the days the British union flag flies over City Hall.
