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This year the people of Northern Ireland will go to the polls to elect 108 MLA’s to the Northern Ireland Assembly on May 5th.

The current standings of the parties are as follows:

• Democratic Unionist Party: 36
• Sinn Fein: 27
• Ulster Unionist Party: 18
• Social Democratic and Labour Party: 16
• Alliance Party: 7
• Green Party: 1
• Independents: 5

The campaign is well under way since the Assembly was dissolved on 24th of March and a number of issues have been raised.

Issues raised have been health, education, policing, and the possibility of a Sinn Fein First Minister. This may be seen as scaremongering, but it is a possibility.

I will be following the election as it progresses. Below is some of the Party Election Broadcast that have been shown.

DUP

Sinn Fein

UUP

SDLP

Alliance

Green Party

UKIP

BNP

Have I missed any? Let me know.

I know I haven’t blogged about the UK General Election since before it, that is because of two reasons. One is work and life in General and the other was I wanted to see how the coalition talks were going.

So as you know, the end results of the General Election were as follows:

• Conservatives 306 (+97)
• Labour 258 (-91)
• Liberal Democrats 57 (-5)
• DUP 8 (-1)
• SNP 6 (NC)
• Sinn Fein 5 (NC)
• Plaid Cymru 3 (+1)
• SDLP 3 (NC)
• Green 1 (+1)
• Alliance 1 (+1)

Conversely in the Local Elections in England, Labour were the winners in terms of increases, but the Conservatives still control the most councils. The Main results were as follows:

• Conservatives suffered a net loss of 8 councils and lost 121 councillors.
• Labour gained control of an extra 14 councils and gained 393 councillors
• Liberal Democrats suffered a net loss of 3 councils and lost 119 councillors
• Independents lost 106 seats
• The British National Party lost 26 seats.

So looking back at my predictions how did i do?

Vote Share

The Conservatives will win the most votes, followed by the Liberal Democrats. Labour will come third.

Well I got the first place right. But thats it.

Seats

Conservaties will have about 270, Labour, 260, Liberal Democrats 90.

I was close on the Labour number as they ended up on 258. I was out on the other two.

Other Parties

Greens will win their first seat. My money is on Brighton Pavillion.

Correct!

BNP will not win a seat.

Correct!

UKIP will win two seats. Buckingham and one other

Wrong. They won none

SNP will increase their seats by 2

Wrong, they didnt increase their seats.

PC will also increase their seats by 2

Wrong, they only took an extra seat.

So it was an interesting at times election. I stayed up until 4am Friday morning and I was bored at times.

The negotiations between the Conservatives and Lib Dems are coming to a close as I type and it will be up to the parliamentary party of each party now.

I wonder where it will go. Full coalition or Supple and Confidence Pact? What do you think?

So tomorrow will see the polls opening for the UK General Election. I have been following the campaigns in my spare time but not really blogging about it. Mainly as I didn’t know where I stood. I do now.

I am hoping for a Liberal Democrat surge tomorrow.

But enough of who I want to do well, on to some predictions. Some of these are random, others are obvious. I will be up late into the night on Thursday watching the results on the telly and if anything interesting happens, it will be blogged about!

So, on to the predictons!

Vote Share

The Conservatives will win the most votes, followed by the Liberal Democrats. Labour will come third.

Seats

Conservaties will have about 270, Labour, 260, Liberal Democrats 90.

Other Parties

Greens will win their first seat. My money is on Brighton Pavillion.

BNP will not win a seat.

UKIP will win two seats. Buckingham and one other

SNP will increase their seats by 2

PC will also increase their seats by 2

Northern Ireland is too close to call for me.

They are my predictions. A hung parliament is in the offing. Have you got any predictions?

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So the new European Parliament is going to be a bit of an Alphabet soup. According to The Lobby blog the Party of European Socialist Grouping in the Parliament is going to change its name to the “Alliance of Socialists and Democrats” or ASDE for short (Not to be confused with ASDA). So why the change?

The name change is to suit the Italian Partito Democratico who in the last parliament where split between PES and ALDE. This will shore up the PES ASDE numbers by giving them 21 extra MEPs.

There was some opposition from some MEPs who didnt want to lose the Socialist branding, but after the election results they look less likely to stick to their guns.

So the Groupings in the next parliament could be as follows:

• EPP
• ASDE
• ALDE
• Greens-EFA
• GUE/NGL
• Ind/Dem (maybe)
• European Conservatives (Or similar name)
• Far-Right grouping (BNP are trying to set up a grouping)

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To form a grouping in the European Parliament you need a minimum of 25 MEPs from at least seven member states. After last elections the Ind/Dem were left with 18 MEPs from four member states.

They are:

• UK: 13 UKIP MEPs
• Greece: 2 Popular Orthodox Rally MEPs
• Netherlands: 2 Christian Union MEPs
• France: 1 Movement for France MEP

So if Ind/Dem is to continue it needs to get seven more MEPs from three member states. There are 93 MEPs in the NI grouping at the moment, some of these will go to the new Conservative Grouping and Ind/Dem might be able to get more to join from them to survive into the next Parliament.

The BNP will be looking to the NI MEPs to make a far right grouping in the Parliament. It looks set to be along the lines of the failed Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty grouping.

Its going to be a interesting parliamentry term.

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There is a lot of talk in the UK at the moment of the possibility of a BNP breakthrough at the European Elections like UKIP last time out. Two recent surveys don’t point that way.

Two surveys have the BNP polling at about the 4% mark. According to the YouGov poll in the Sunday Times the BNP are polling at 4% (nc) and according to Predict 09 it is polling at 4.4% (-0.5% on 2004). According to these polls the BNP will not pick up any seats in the European Election. In fac both polls show that UKIP are down on their 2004 result of 16.1%. YouGov have them on 7% and Predict 09 have them on 7% also. Meaning that UKIP could loose 8 seats.

Whether of not that will happen is hard to tell as it hard to judge support for smaller parties in the UK. Also the electoral system is different for the European Elections in the UK (outside of Northern Ireland which uses STV). They use a List PR system using the D’Hondt method. Im not sure if there will be a large swing to the BNP, but then again the campaign has only truely begun now!

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Will this happen? I don’t know. Its highly unlikely that Libertas will pick up seats in Ireland (unless Sinnott joins them after the election), but they could pick up seats in the United Kingdom, where Labour and UKIP are predicted to be down.

Interesting times ahead for the Chairman.