As was widely expected, Sinn Féin’s Órfhlaith Begley comfortably won Thursday’s West Tyrone by-election to fill the Westminster parliamentary seat left vacant in January by the controversial resignation of Barry McElduff.

In the general election in June 2017, Mr McElduff had a majority of 10,342, winning more than half the total vote. This time, in a significantly lower turnout, Ms Begley took 47% of the vote and had a majority of 7,956 over second-placed Thomas Buchanan of the DUP, who had also finished runner-up to Mr McElduff last year. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP’s vote was lower compared with 2017, while the other parties increased their numerical vote, with the SDLP rising the most, by 4.9%.

Ms Begley becomes the first female MP to represent the constituency.

The full result was as follows:

  • Órfhlaith Begley (Sinn Féin) 16,346
  • Thomas Buchanan (DUP) 8,390
  • Daniel McCrossan (SDLP) 6,254
  • Chris Smyth (UUP) 2,909
  • Stephen Donnelly (Alliance) 1,130

Ms Begley arrived at the count in Omagh accompanied by her party leaders Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald and celebrated with supporters before giving her acceptance speech. She said tonight represented a “new chapter” for the area and spoke about “building bridges between our communities” in the future. (Incidentally, well done to the BBC’s Darran Marshall for digging out the new MP’s first-ever appearance on TV…)

Thursday’s turnout was 55%, well down on the 68% – one of the highest turnouts in the country – in June 2017. The poor weather likely had something to do with that, as well as possible ‘election fatigue’ – this was the seventh time voters in this constituency had gone to the polls in the past four years – and the likelihood of a comfortable hold for Sinn Féin.

But Alliance’s David Ford also partly blamed “the difficulties at Stormont” telling the Ulster Herald’s Ryan McAleer that “given that there’s no working executive, that’s clearly something that won’t encourage people to come out.” Nevertheless, Alliance apparently recorded their best-ever share of the vote in the constituency.

(You can read the Ulster Herald’s rolling blog of the day’s events here)

Earlier in the day, there had been allegations of a breach of electoral rules governing electronic devices in Strabane and elsewhere; while police were called to a polling station in Greencastle after reports that a man had allegedly pulled a gun on election workers. A 59-year-old man was later arrested and the chief electoral officer said that voting had not been interrupted.

 

Also published on Medium.