The Results:

It is hard to believe that it is seventeen years since that encounter between Jeffrey Donaldson and a constituent at a polling station. Jeffrey was described as a “very devious young man”.

So…Jeffrey romped home in Lagan Valley. The elephant-not-in-the-room was Basil McCrea. This is the last place to have a NI21 presence…but not on the ballot box. There is nothing optimistic for Basil in these results. He would need to be politically between Alliance and UUP and there doesnt look to be many votes in that position.

Alex Redpath is one of those Young Unionists, who only seemed to exist on Social Media. The problem with Young Unionists is that they become Old Unionists very quickly.

So at least three seats for DUP and one each for UUP and Alliance in 2016. But interesting if Alliance persist with the veteran Trevor Lunn or go for a younger person.

The sixth seat? SDLP did reasonably well with a small improvement and clearly the leading nationalist party but still some way short of a quota.

The destination of the sixth seat will be decided by transfers within unionism.