THERE has been both heartache and joy for parties as votes continued to be counted on Friday evening, with the landscape appearing to shift in Sinn Féin’s favour in terms of overall seats.
In Belfast, the party landed the city's very first confirmed seat with Geraldine McAteer, who was co-opted in 2014, earning an impressive 2,037 first preference votes in Balmoral.
The city's most recent mayor, Sinn Féin’s Tina Black, was also returned on the second count for the Court DEA with 1,822 first preferences.
In Belfast's Lisnasharragh DEA, the SDLP's Séamas de Faoite saw a significant bump up from 2019, winning his seat with 1,580 first preferences and increasing his quota from 0.6 to 0.9 percent.
As votes continued to be tallied, dark clouds were drawing over the PUP’s chance of holding onto its single Belfast seat, with leader Billy Hutchinson struggling on Friday evening.
He and Coleraine colleague Russell Watton represent the party’s only elected members anywhere in the north.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin also saw two historic firsts, winning seats in two traditionally unionist strongholds - Lisburn North, where Paul Burke became its first ever elected councillor, and in Ballymena, where Bréanainn Lyness won a seat with 926 first preferences. This was a significant increase from 2019 when Patrice Hardy failed to be elected in Ballymena with 521 first preferences.
Also in Lisburn North, Nicholas Trimble, son of former UUP leader David Trimble, held onto his seat with a slight drop from 2019 to 627 first preferences. The DEA also saw former Conservative candidate Gary Hynds clinch a seat on the fifth count.
Voters more than doubled his first preferences to 890 after he dropped the Tory tag and ran as an independent this time around.
Also in the DEA, outgoing DUP mayor Scott Carson will now be giving up his seat alongside his mayoral chain of office, after losing out despite an increase in votes. Transfers at the final round of counting saw the seat he was hoping to clinch go to Mr Hynds.
The DUP's first ever openly gay election candidate, Alison Bennington, saw a boost in Antrim and Newtownabbey’s Glengormley DEA, where her first preference share rose to 1,432, up from when she was first elected in 2019 with 856.
In Derry's Faughan DEA, jumping ship to the UUP paid off for ex-DUP councillor Ryan McCready, who topped the poll with 1,282 first preferences, up from the 940 that earned him his seat with his former party last time around.
The ex-Royal Irish Regiment soldier left the DUP in 2021, claiming it was "no longer compatible" with his political beliefs.
However, departing the DUP last year had the opposite effect for fellow Faughan candidate Graham Warke, who saw his first preferences fall to just 279. The former Derry Mayor - who left the DUP to walk a "new political pathway" - had previously topped the poll in the DEA in 2019 with 1,050 number ones on ballot papers.
In Craigavon, the SDLP is licking wounds after losing both of its seats in the DEA. This included the seat held by Thomas Larkin, who after announcing he was not standing in this election, was replaced as a candidate by former Alliance member Jackie Coade. She had left to join the SDLP over how her former party handled her complaint of alleged aggressive verbal abuse by a male member.
