The 1921 Northern Ireland general election was held on Tuesday, 24 May 1921. It was the first election to the

Parliament of Northern Ireland The Parliament of Northern Ireland was the home rule legislature of Northern Ireland, created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which sat from 7 June 1921 to 30 March 1972, when it was suspended because of its inability to restore ord ...

Ulster Unionist Party The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule m ...

members won a

two-thirds majority 2/3 may refer to: * A fraction with decimal value 0.6666... * A way to write the expression "2 ÷ 3" ("two divided by three") * 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines of the United States Marine Corps * February 3 * March 2 Events Pre-1600 * 537 – ...

of votes cast and more than three-quarters of the seats in the assembly. Sinn Féin in particular was shocked at the scale of the Unionist victory, having spent considerable resources on the campaign, and had expected to win between 1/3 and 1/2 of the seats. The election was conducted using the

single transferable vote Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate ...

system. The election took place during the Irish War of Independence, on the same day as the election to the parliament of Southern Ireland. As the election in Southern Ireland was merely a formality, with all candidates being returned unopposed (and therefore guaranteeing Sinn Féin complete dominance), Sinn Féin was able to focus its resources entirely on the election in Northern Ireland. The Sinn Féin campaign focused on the issue of

partition Partition may refer to: Computing Hardware * Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive * Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job Software * Partition (database), the division of a ...

implemented by the

Government of Ireland Act 1920 The Government of Ireland Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo. 5 c. 67) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act's long title was "An Act to provide for the better government of Ireland"; it is also known as the Fourth Home Rule Bill ...

, with Sinn Féin and the Nationalist party running on a combined anti-partition ticket.

Sinn Féin campaign

Sinn Féin invested considerable resources in their campaign, placing advertisements in almost 50 northern newspapers making a range of arguments against partition. Sinn Féin also published its own newspaper, ''The Unionist'', of which 50,000 copies were sent to prominent Protestants in East Ulster, particularly

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...

. In particular, Sinn Féin claimed there was widespread ignorance over the situation in Ulster and warned against the economic dangers of partition, particularly in relation to threats of a renewed boycott against northern goods in a manner similar to the "Belfast Boycott". Sinn Féin also attempted to attract Ulster's rural and agricultural workers, arguing partition would put them at the mercy of eastern Ulster's urban elites. Despite the scale and organisation of the campaign, its arguments failed to resonate with voters, with the party's chief organiser Eamon Donnelly claiming on the day of the election that all Sinn Féin's efforts had achieved was assuring a high Unionist turnout.

Results

''Total electorate: 582,464; turnout: 88.0% (512,842).''

Votes summary

Seats summary

Footnotes

References

Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results
{{Northern Ireland elections Northern Ireland general election 1921 Northern Ireland general election