Northern Ireland: Double Triumph for the Democratic Unionist Party

Abstract

The General Election result in Northern Ireland impacted across the UK. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) enjoyed a double victory. It extended dominance of the unionist community and collected a bigger prize as its ten MPs (a record tally) held a pivotal position at Westminster. In holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, the DUP was not shy in articulating its price for supporting the otherwise friendless Conservative government in key votes, extracting £1 billion of new funding for Northern Ireland. The DUP’s hegemonic position within its unionist constituency was matched by Sinn Féin’s obliteration of its Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) rival within the nationalist community, but without any obvious reward for republicans. At a time of considerable instability, with Northern Ireland’s political institutions undergoing one of their episodic crises, unionist and nationalist voters overwhelmingly backed the dominant representative forces within their respective ethno-national blocs. This analysis of the election draws upon data from the 2017 Economic and Social Research Council’s Northern Ireland General Election study to examine why the DUP and Sinn Féin dominated the contest and looks at the implications of the outcome in Northern Ireland and at Westminster.1