I got my vote in this morning. No prizes for guessing who this former Alliance Party candidate gave his first preference to. But I made a conscious decision to give further preferences in order of support for the European Union (disappointed how few of them there were).
The DUP caravan arrived while I was in the polling station. I’ve never been comfortable with this. I prefer the typical American situation that bans any political canvassing within, say, a 100-yard radius of the polling station. Anyway, as candidate I never found harrassing voters at the polling station to be very effective. (Instead, ringing people up to learn if they voted/encouraging them to vote is much more useful.) The Dodds shout-mobile also made its way into my neighbourhood (also visited by the Allister shout-mobile and Nicholson shout-mobile). I tried to capture short videos of them as they passed my house, but alas failed. For the record, here is my result prediction:De Brun (Sinn Fein): 123,360 (24%) [down only slightly from 26% 2004 figure]
Maginness (SDLP): 102,800 (20%) [retrieves votes lent to Gilliland]
Parsley (Alliance): 25,700 (5%) [low turnout helps]
Nicholson (UUP): 77,100 (15%) [or worse; at least 15,000 UUP voters stay home]
Dodds (DUP): 143,920 (28%) [lose 4% to Allister; UUP loss helps DUP %]
Allister (Ind.): 30,840 (6%) [would take another 20,000 DUP switch for De Brun to top poll]
Agnew (Greens): 10,280 (2%) [can they surpass 2.1% Alliance 1999 result?]
