After the declaration
So the Chief Electoral Officer Douglas Bain made his of the first preference votes slightly earlier than expected. The result could have almost been a carbon copy of the 2004 election, if it had not been for the arrival of the Traditional Unionists on the scene.
Sinn Fein replicated their 26% vote, Jim Nicholson slightly built on his 16.6% vote (up half a percentage to 17.1%) and Alban Maginness slightly built on Martin Morgan's 15.9% (up to 16.2%).
But Jim Allister who predicted a "stunning" vote has doen just that taking his 13.7% more or less entirely from the DUP. Diane Dodds will take some comfort in the fact that - in contrast to the informal predictions over the weekend - she did maintain her party's position as the lead unionists, on 18.2%. However given the dizzy heights which the DUP used to inhabit in these elections it must be very sobering to be grubbing around with the others.
The elimination of the Alliance and Greens should benefit both Jim Nicholson and Alban Maginness, but is unlikely to enable the UCUNF candidate to make the quota of 121,144 votes. So it will then ironically be Jim Allister's votes which will bring Jim Nicholson and Diane Dodds home. It will be interesting to see just how much the average TUV voter has turned against the DUP, by watching the extent to which they transfer to Diane Dodds or to Jim Nicholson.
I have to break off as we are back on air on ´óÏó´«Ã½2 at 2.30pm, but I shall be back online later.
I'm 
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