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Message from discussion NI Constituency sizes
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Jim Riley  
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 More options Nov 9 1998, 3:00 am
Newsgroups: uk.politics.electoral
From: jimr...@pipeline.com (Jim Riley)
Date: 1998/11/09
Subject: Re: NI Constituency sizes

In article <362E3404.2...@my.sig> Gerry Lynch wrote:
>Crispin asked about NI Constituency sizes.  I don't have the exact
>figures to hand, but the smallest was East Antrim with ~59,000 voters
>and the largest North Antrim with ~72,500.

The first column is at the time of Forum elections in June 1996
(courtesy of Nicholas Whyte).  The second column is for the June 1998
Assembly elections (courtesy of Tobias Zywietz)

57,989  59,313  Antrim East
71,799  73,247  Antrim North
68,898  69,426  Antrim South
62,161  60,562  Belfast East
63,890  61,209  Belfast South
65,411  62,541  Belfast North
61,344  60,669  Belfast West
62,810  62,942  Down North
69,035  71,000  Down South
63,716  65,383  Fermanagh & South Tyrone
66,598  68,888  Foyle
70,045  71,661  Lagan Valley
58,471  59,370  Londonderry East
69,887  71,553  Newry & Armagh
69,093  70,868  Strangford
57,348  59,081  Tyrone West
57,683  59,991  Ulster Mid
69,928  70,852  Upper Bann

Adjusting the number of seats per constituency may have had no net
effect.  Let's say that a 7th seat were added to the 4 largest
constituencies at the expense of the 6th seat in the 4 smallest
constituencies.

SDLP might gain in Newry&Armagh and South Down, while losing seats in
East Antrim and West Tyrone.  Sinn Fein might gain the seat in North
Antrim and lose one in Mid Ulster.  UUP might gain the seat in Lagan
Valley and lost the seat in Londonderry East.

If the seats were to be apportioned on the basis of electorate size,
it would probably be more fair to have an assembly of around 100 or
115 members, so that the average number of members/constituency were
5.5 or 6.5 and you could recognize an ideal range of 6.1 to 4.9 as 6 to
5, rather than a range of 6.6 to 5.4 being recognized as 7 to 5.

--
Jim Riley


 
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