Ahead of the election, Alliance leader Naomi Long predicted that a big result for her party could herald the end of a political system based on binary division.
A big result is certainly what Alliance delivered, increasing its first preference vote share by about 4.5% to 13.5% and leapfrogging the struggling UUP and SDLP to become Stormont’s third largest party for the first time.
Once derided as a metropolitan party whose support base was confined to greater Belfast and the surrounding areas, Alliance has now stretched its geographical reach into areas where seat gains had once not even been contemplated.
