The following piece was written by YU membership and registration officer Alex Redpath, himself from Lagan Valley, on the forthcomming by-election.
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On February the 13th there will be a by-election in Dromore after the resignation of Tyrone Howe. There are 7 candidates running for the seat including a candidate from the newly founded TUV. Our candidate is Carol Black who has worked for Lagan Valley MLA Basil McCrea for 3 years. Carol has lived in dromore for 15 years and is the only candidate from Dromore running in this election.
However this is no mere council election it has far-reaching political consequences on a national scale. This election has turned into a referendum on whether or not you approve of the DUP's actions in regards to the assembly. The DUP have therefore reacted strongly. It is rumored that Peter Robinson himself has delegated responsibility for winning this election to Jeffrey Donaldson and has tasked him with winning a convincing victory so that the DUP can claim a mandate for their actions.
In the last election the DUP polled exactly 3,000 votes the UUP polled 1,884 turnout was 64%. Since this is a by-election we expect turnout to fall to about 48% this means that a projected poll is DUP 2,250 UUP 1,413 the DUP have a majority of 837. In normal circumstances this would be an almost impossible figure to overcome, however with the emergence of the TUV we have a hope. I have heard estimates of the TUV polling between 500-1000 votes these votes will almost exclusively come of the DUP. Even if we take the low figure and deduct about 100 for disillusioned unionists voting again then the DUP's majority falls to 400. Carol is an excellent candidate and has the full support of the MLA. Paul Stewart on the other hand has spent his life working for Jeffrey, lives in Dromara and comes across as a DUP puppet candidate. I have every confidence that this election will be damn close and a UUP victory could be on the cards. I have been on the ground and heard the response and I would put our chances at about 40/60 which is a lot better than you would get of any bookie.
Canvassing has been an interesting experience and the response on the ground is as good as I have ever got. The newer estates are hard going as a lot of people are detached from local issues however in the more established areas we are very strong. I went to one estate of 18 houses. Of these people 10 where in and 8 were solid Ulster unionists. One 89 year old man told me how he had voted DUP for years but now he was so disgusted with how they had acted that he would be voting UUP at the next election. In Another estate I met two elderly ladies who were completely disillusioned with the whole process they blamed the DUP for lying to them and jumping into bed with their so called enemies, these ladies were impressed that Carol was a local candidate for local issues and have pledged their support to the UUP. We were even fortunate enough to pick up a new member along the way who would be perfectly happy to canvass. However it was not all good going. One very elderly gentleman told me he would sooner vote for Sinn Fein than a UUP candidate so evidently the TUV have a vote to catch.
Another positive thing that is coming out of this election is that we are getting experienced canvassing teams who know what we're doing. During the assembly election Basil laid out the idea of having teams of 4 people working semi-independently. This allows us to cover an immense amount of ground and as long as we have one person who has good experience of canvassing we do well. I am not going to make any predictions on this election but I think it is the best chance we have had in a good while we are about 50:50 so we need people out canvassing.
Alex Redpath.
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