Voting expected to exceed 60% with higher numbers likely to reflect anger over bungled renewable heat incentive scheme

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

As the ballot boxes are opened and votes counted on Friday morning in the second Northern Ireland assembly election in 10 months, there are expectations that turnout could be the highest in the region in a decade.

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The Electoral Office of Northern Ireland said on Thursday night turnout was likely to be higher than last year’s assembly election when 55% of the province’s electorate voted.

Some reports suggest turnout may exceed 60%, the highest in 10 years. The EU referendum turnout in Northern Ireland was 63% last June.

Gerry Kelly, the former IRA Old Bailey bomber and Sinn Féin assembly member for North Belfast in the previous regional parliament, predicted turnout would be at least 60%.

He said Sinn Féin would be “up for it immediately” to get into post-negotiations aimed at restoring cross-community power-sharing government in Belfast. “What we want are short negotiations to sort these issues out,” Kelly said.

A higher turnout on Thursday may be in response to voter anger at the way the region’s largest political party, the Democratic Unionists (DUP), mismanaged and then stubbornly defended the renewable heat incentive scheme.

The fallout over the initiative became known as the “cash for ash” scandal. The scheme’s poor accounting resulted in farmers and small businesses making £1.60 for every £1 they invested in boilers fired up with wood pellets and other recyclable materials. The final bill for the scheme is estimated to cost the taxpayer up to £500m.

The DUP first minister, Arlene Foster, refused to stand down temporarily from her post to allow for a public inquiry to be held into the scheme. Martin McGuinness, the ailing Sinn Féin deputy first minister, resigned in January in protest, triggering this week’s snap election.

Under power-sharing rules, any cross-community coalition falls if one of the leading representatives of either the unionists or nationalists resigns from the government in Belfast.

In Foster’s constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, turnout on Thursday was 75%.

Meanwhile, the proportion of registered voters casting their ballots was even higher in the Mid Ulster stronghold of Michelle O’Neill, the new Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, with 80% of the electorate going to polling stations.

The key electoral battle will be between Foster and O’Neill. The DUP won 38 seats in the Stormont parliament last year and was therefore able to elect Foster as first minister.

The main unionist party is expected to lose seats in an assembly cut from 108 members overall last May to 90 this time round. If Sinn Féin emergesas the largest political party, O’Neill could become the new first minister.

While the posts of first and deputy first minister are equal under the complex rules of power sharing between Catholics and Protestants, if Sinn Féin seizes the post of first minister it would mark a heavy psychological blow against unionism.

Five assembly members are elected to each of the 18 parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland. The region picks its members through the single transferable vote system of proportional representation, whereby voters can allocate number one to their favourite candidate and then transfer down the ballot paper by voting two, three, four, five and so on for the other candidates.

The system means that counts at the eight centres will be protracted with the results not expected until Saturday afternoon.