1921 Northern Ireland general election

1921 Northern Ireland general election

24 May 1921 1925 →
MPs elected →
All 52 seats to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland 27 seats were needed for a majority
Turnout	88.0%
First party Second party Third party   Leader James Craig Éamon de Valera Joe Devlin Party UUP Sinn Féin Nationalist Leader since 1921 1917 1918 Leader's seat Down Down Belfast West Seats won 40 6 6 Popular vote 343,347 104,917 60,577 Percentage 66.9% 20.5% 11.8%
Results of the 1921 Northern Ireland General Election.
Prime Minister before election N/A Prime Minister after election James Craig UUP

The 1921 Northern Ireland general election was held on Tuesday, 24 May 1921. It was the first election to the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Ulster Unionist Party members won two-thirds of votes cast and more than three-quarters of the seats in the assembly. Sinn Féin in particular was shocked at the scale of the Unionist victory, having spent considerable resources on the campaign, and had expected to win between 1/3 and 1/2 of the seats. Sinn Féin and Nationalist Party candidates were successful in the joint County Tyrone/Fermanagh constituency with 54.71 percent of the vote.^[1] The election was conducted using the single transferable vote system.

The election took place during the Irish War of Independence, on the same day as the election to the parliament of Southern Ireland. As the election in Southern Ireland was merely a formality, with all candidates being returned unopposed (and therefore guaranteeing Sinn Féin complete dominance), Sinn Féin was able to focus its resources entirely on the election in Northern Ireland. The Sinn Féin campaign focused on the issue of partition implemented by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, with Sinn Féin and the Nationalist party running on a combined anti-partition ticket.^[2]