Everything Ulster - Election 2005

While 9 DUP MPs made the journey to Westminster for the opening of the new Parliament today, Lady Sylvia Hermon returned alone. Re-elected as MP for North Down, she's the only Ulster Unionist elected to this Parliament. Lady Hermon still hasn't decided whether or not to stand for the Ulster Unionist Party leadership and seems to be genuinely having trouble weighing the responsibility of caring for her husband, who suffers from Alzheimers, with an apparent "sense of duty".

She was interviewed by the BBC today and took the opportunity to say (much to the disgust, I'm sure, of my friends over at A Tangled Web) that the Ulster Unionist party must become more liberal and 'put water between' themselves and the DUP.

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Finally, all the results from Northern Ireland's council elections are in. I have to admit that despite the DUP's successes on Friday, I wasn't expecting them to do quite so well as they did in the local government election! But fair play to them, congratulations. Now lets take a look at what it really means...

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Ulster Unionist David Archer Junior has been elected to Lisburn City Council despite withdrawing from the race a couple of weeks ago due to a late night "incident" in the council offices.

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MUCH to my own personal distaste, the DUP are soaring ahead in the local government elections in Northern Ireland with 170 seats (50 seats have still to be declared). Now that we're into the second day of polling the DUP have outperformed the already optimistic expectations of most pundits.

Participants in Nicholas Whyte's predictions competition expected the DUP to win, on average, just under 160 seats. The Ulster Unionists were expected to get around 130 and maybe even beat Sinn Fein into 3rd place but this doesn't seem to be the case. Sinn Fein are 13 seats in front of the UUP with 116 to the UUP's 103, so pending a late swing it looks like being a disappointing 3rd for the Ulster Unionists.

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As expected, the DUP are early leaders in the council elections in Northern Ireland with Sammy Wilson among the members already elected.

In Belfast, Sinn Fein already have 6 councillors elected and the SDLP and DUP 1 each.

Throughout Northern Ireland, with 196 seats declared, the DUP have 76, Sinn Fein coming in 2nd with 44, UUP 34 and SDLP 29. The Alliance currently have 9 (2 in Newtownabbey) and I'm hoping Tom Ekin will get in in Belfast too!

Check out the BBC's regular updates.