Sinn Fein has become the biggest party in Northern Ireland’s local government for the first time ever, a historic victory that will heap pressure on the Democratic Unionist Party to end its Brexit-linked boycott of the region’s power-sharing government.
With 439 out of a total 462 seats counted as of 7 p.m. on Saturday, the nationalist Sinn Fein had won 136 seats, according to the BBC. That’s 34 seats more than it previously had, and exceeds the DUP’s former total of 122 as the dominant party in local government. The success adds to Sinn Fein’s momentum, after it emerged last year as the biggest in the Stormont Assembly, the first time for a nationalist group in the region’s history.
The DUP meanwhile has 117 seats so far. Sinn Fein attracted 31% of first preference votes while the DUP drew 23%, an 8% gain and 0.8% drop respectively from the 2019 local elections.
