2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election
The 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on 5 May 2022. It elected 90 members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It was the seventh assembly election since the establishment of the assembly in 1998. The election was held three months after the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed due to the resignation of the First Minister, Paul Givan (DUP), in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.
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All 90 seats to the Northern Ireland Assembly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 63.61% (1.2%) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Seats won by each party per constituency. Voters elect 5 assembly members from the 18 constituencies. The shading indicates the combined first preference vote share of the largest party in each constituency. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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In the sixth assembly, elected in 2017, eight parties had Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs): the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), latterly led by Jeffrey Donaldson; Sinn Féin, led by Michelle O'Neill; the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), latterly led by Doug Beattie; the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), led by Colum Eastwood; Alliance, led by Naomi Long; the Greens, led by Clare Bailey; People Before Profit (PBP), who have a collective leadership; and the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), led by Jim Allister.
Sinn Féin became the largest party, marking the first time an Irish nationalist/republican party won the most seats in an assembly election in Northern Ireland, and has the right to nominate Northern Ireland's first nationalist First Minister. The DUP's vote share dropped almost 7% and it lost three seats; despite this, unionists won two more seats than nationalists—37 seats to 35—and a marginally higher share of the vote. Alliance made large gains, as the only party to gain seats at the election, overtaking the UUP and the SDLP to become the third-largest party in the Assembly. The Greens lost both seats they held before the election and were unrepresented in the Assembly for the first time since 2003.
As Northern Ireland's government is based on power-sharing, the DUP (as the largest unionist party) were required to nominate a deputy First Minister for the Executive to be formed and Assembly to conduct business; however, they refused to do so due to their concerns with the Northern Ireland Protocol and post-Brexit trading issues. It wasn't until 31 January 2024 that the DUP and UK Government announced a deal had been struck to revive the Executive, and on 3 February 2024 the Assembly swore in Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O'Neill and DUP deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly.