ABSTRACT
Utilising a combination of information obtained during interviews with political actors and activists, electoral results data and secondary sources, this chapter fulfils three main objectives. First, it determines why the PR-STV electoral system was chosen during the Good Friday negotiations for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the disagreements and debates around this choice. Whilst PR-STV has a history in Northern Ireland dating back to partition, which has been explored in Chapter 3, the factors behind its selection for Assembly elections are important, as this effectively established PR-STV as Northern Ireland’s principal electoral system, used for all elections except those to the Westminster Parliament. Second, the chapter analyses information obtained from interviews with political party actors and activists on how parties perceive and understand the preferential ranking method of PR-STV, and how this influences their election campaigns and strategies. Finally, transfer data from elections in Northern Ireland is explored and analysed in order to determine any correlation between party perception of the role of lower-order preferences and electoral outcomes. The aim of this chapter is to extend knowledge of the influence of PR-STV on how political parties campaign for elections in Northern Ireland and to serve as a precursor to the following chapter, an interpretive analysis of election literature with the aim of determining whether the system is inducing parties to moderate their campaigns in an attempt to attract inter-bloc transfers.
