Sunday, April 10, 2011

Charting the Assembly election candidates

Following on the Assembly candidate nominations, we now know that Belfast East will have 17 candidates listed on its long ballot paper. Belfast South and Belfast West are next largest with 14 candidates each. South Antrim will have the shortest ballot papers with only 10 candidates listed.

Newbie/Old hand candidate ration in 2011 Assembly elections

We also know that just five constituencies have all six “sitting” MLAs standing again for re-election – Belfast North/South/West, Newry and Armagh, and South Antrim. Four constituencies have just four of their existing MLAs fighting to be elected. And as Stratagem point out

"The only constituency in which all six MLAs elected in 2007 are running again in the 2011 Assembly Elections is Newry & Armagh"

Number of parties standing in each constituency along with number of independents - Assembly election 2011

In terms of party diversity, Belfast East has 11 distinct parties standing along with two independents. Similarly, Belfast South has 11 parties ... but no independents. No constituencies have more than two independents on the ballot paper. West Tyrone and Foyle both have just candidates from five parties standing, and both have two independents on the ballot paper too.

Number of candidates per party (split by gender) in 2011 Assembly elections

The DUP are running the most candidates (44), with Sinn Fein (40) not far behind. The UUP (29) and SDLP (28) are neck and neck. Alliance are running 22.

Chart showing how many candidates from each party are running in each constituency in 2011 Assembly elections

In the chart above you can see how many candidates each party is running in each constituency.

Candidate gender ration in 2011 Assembly elections

Gender wise, Newry and Armagh has no female candidates. Five constituencies only offer one female candidate. Belfast East, South Down and Upper Bann have four female candidates on the ballot paper.

Percentage of female candidates in 2011 Election assemblies

Technically, the BNP are running the highest proportion of female candidates (1 out of their total of 3 candidates = 33.3%). Alliance are next with 31.8% female candidates, then Sinn Fein (27.5%). Of the other main parties, the DUP is a mere 15.9%, SDLP at 14.3% and UUP lagging at 10.3%.

(Cross posted from Slugger O'Toole.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for compiling all this together in one post and giving a wee bit of commentary on it. Fascinating stuff. It'll certainly be interesting to see how the next month or so pans out.

WaywardEffort said...

An interesting post,really interesting to the see the the range of parties standing, the Procapitalism party - who knew?

I did a quick word cloud of election candidates

http://worditout.com/word-cloud/27410

and it seems this election is all about the Davids! Dunno how illuminating that is but it is a pretty picture!