The

2019 United Kingdom general election The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 12 December 2019, with 47,074,800 registered voters entitled to vote to elect 650 Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons of the Un ...

was held on 12 December 2019 to elect all 650 members of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

, including 18 seats in Northern Ireland. 1,293,971 people were eligible to vote, up 51,273 from the 2017 general election. 62.09% of eligible voters turned out, down 3.5 percentage points from the last general election. For the first time in history, nationalist parties won more seats than unionist parties.

Electoral system

MPs were elected in 18 Single Member constituencies by

first-past-the-post First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or First-preference votes, first-preference, and the cand ...

Background

The election was called on 29 October 2019 under the

Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 The Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 (c. 29), also known as the Election Bill, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made legal provision for the holding of the 2019 general election on 12 December 2019. The a ...

. At the 2017 election, the nationalist

Social Democratic and Labour Party The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP; ) is a social democratic and Irish nationalist political party in Northern Ireland. The SDLP currently has eight members in the Northern Ireland Assembly ( MLAs) and two members of Parliament (M ...

(SDLP) and the

Ulster Unionist Party The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a Unionism in Ireland, unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded as the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it l ...

(UUP) lost all of their seats. The DUP won 10 seats, Sinn Féin won 7 seats, and Independent Unionist

Sylvia Hermon Sylvia Eileen, Lady Hermon (née Paisley; born 11 August 1955) is a retired Unionist politician from Northern Ireland. She served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of North Down from 2001 to 2019. She was first elected ...

was also elected. The

election An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative d ...

ended in a

hung parliament A hung parliament is a term used in legislatures primarily under the Westminster system (typically employing Majoritarian representation, majoritarian electoral systems) to describe a situation in which no single political party or pre-existing ...

, and the

Democratic Unionist Party The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is a Unionism in Ireland, unionist, Ulster loyalism, loyalist, British nationalist and national conservative political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1971 during the Troubles by Ian Paisley, who ...

(DUP) signed a confidence and supply agreement with the Conservative Party. In 2018, Sinn Féin MP for West Tyrone, Barry McElduff, resigned after a social media post he made caused controversy regarding perceived

sectarianism Sectarianism is a debated concept. Some scholars and journalists define it as pre-existing fixed communal categories in society, and use it to explain political, cultural, or Religious violence, religious conflicts between groups. Others conceiv ...

on the

Kingsmill massacre The Kingsmill massacre, also referred to as the Whitecross massacre, was a mass shooting that took place on 5 January 1976 near the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Whitecross in south County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Gunmen stopped a mini ...

. The party won a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, or a bypoll in India, is an election used to fill an office that has become vacant between general elections. A vacancy may arise as a result of an incumben ...

later, but with a plurality instead of a majority. In the

2019 European Parliament election The 2019 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 23 and 26 May 2019. It was the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) we ...

, Sinn Féin, the DUP, and the Alliance Party each won a seat.

Participating parties

102 candidates stood in the general election. The Alliance Party was the only party standing in all 18 seats. The DUP stood in 17 seats, the UUP in 16, and both Sinn Féin and the SDLP in 15 seats.

Aontú Aontú (; "Unity") is a conservative Irish republican political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It has been led by Peadar Tóibín since its foundation in January 2019. The party holds socially conservative ...

stood in 7 seats, the

Northern Ireland Conservatives The Northern Ireland Conservatives is the Northern Irish branch of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. The Conservatives are the only political party to field candidates in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and typically contes ...

in 4, the Green Party of Northern Ireland in 3, and

People Before Profit People Before Profit (, PBP) is a Trotskyist political party formed in October 2005. The party is active in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. History As Socialist Environmental Alliance People Before Profit was established in 200 ...

and the

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP, ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of parliament (both through defect ...

in 2.

Traditional Unionist Voice The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV's political programme has as its '' sine qua non'' the preservation of Northern Ireland's pl ...

did not stand in this election. There were also three independent candidates. Sylvia Hermon did not contest this election. Sinn Féin operates on an all-Ireland basis. Their MPs in Westminster practice

abstentionism Abstentionism is the political practice of standing for election to a deliberative assembly while refusing to take up any seats won or otherwise participate in the assembly's business. Abstentionism differs from an election boycott in that abs ...

, meaning they do not take their seats in the House of Commons. Aontú, who like Sinn Féin are an abstentionist all-Ireland party, was formed in January 2019.

Opinion polling

Results

File:2019 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland.svg, Individual seats by winner vote share

Results by constituency

Footnotes

References

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

2019 elections in Northern Ireland