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| Turnout | 38.6% ( 26.9%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The1995 North Down by-election, in theNorth Down constituency, was held on 15 June 1995, following the death ofJames Kilfedder, who had represented the constituency since the1970 general election. Kilfedder had formed theUlster Popular Unionist Party in 1980, but the party disintegrated on his death.
The North Down constituency was created in 1950, and had consistently returnedUnionist MPs with large majorities. It had also seen some of theAlliance Party of Northern Ireland's strongest results, peaking at 22.1% of the vote in the1983 general election, and in the1992 general election, it had seen theConservative Party's best result in Northern Ireland, picking up 32.0% of the vote.
In 1995, North Down was the wealthiest constituency in the province, and had one of the lowestCatholic populations. As a result, neither theSocial Democratic and Labour Party norSinn Féin, the two parties most closely associated with the Catholic community in Northern Ireland, had regularly stood candidates in the constituency, and neither chose to stand in the by-election.
Bob McCartney had stood in the constituency for theUlster Unionist Party in 1983, when he had come third with 20.3% of the vote. In 1987 he fell out with the party when he refused to withdraw and give Kilfedder a free run on a joint platform of opposition to theAnglo-Irish Agreement, instead running as a "Real Unionist". McCartney now announced his intention to stand in the election, as a UK Unionist. Despite their differences, he gained the tacit backing of theDemocratic Unionist Party, who had won only 9.8% of the vote in 1992 and chose not to stand their own candidate.
The Ulster Unionist Party had not run a candidate in North Down since Bob McCartney in 1983, but they believed they were best placed to take Kilfedder'spersonal vote. They chose to runAlan McFarland, a former Army officer and then Parliamentary secretary to some of their MPs, in preference toReg Empey, one of their most prominent members. The Alliance Party selectedOliver Napier, their former party leader, hoping his experience and notability would regain some of the votes which they had lost in the 1992 election. The Conservative Party had suffered a dramatic loss of votes in the local elections, and their candidate in the 1992 election had moved away, but they chose Stuart Sexton, a member from Croydon in South London.
Four other candidates stood.Alan Chambers, a local councillor, ran as an independent Unionist. TheNatural Law Party stood James Anderson, their leader in Northern Ireland, Michael Brooks who had previously stood as an "Ulster Protestant" candidate in the1987 Irish general election inDonegal North-East,[1] stood on a platform to "Free ParaLee Clegg Now", and Christopher Carter stood asUlster's Independent Voice.
The big story of the campaign was fromThe Guardian, who announced that if McCartney was elected, he would apply for theLabour Partywhip, an unusual move for a unionist, who were more usually associated with the Conservatives.
The results gave McCartney a win, which he claimed was a victory for left-right politics, as opposed to sectarian politics, with the Ulster Unionists a disappointed distant second. Shortly after the election,James Molyneaux retired as their leader, and was replaced byDavid Trimble.
The Alliance came third, with their best ever share of the vote in the constituency. Chambers also saved his deposit, but the Conservatives received what was their worst vote in any UK Parliamentary election since 1918.
The by-election was the first since theFermanagh and South Tyrone by-election of April 1981 where a seat transferred between two candidates from outside the major parties, and the first since theNorth Down by-election of 1986 won by a minor party.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK Unionist | Bob McCartney | 10,124 | 37.0 | New | |
| UUP | Alan McFarland | 7,232 | 26.4 | New | |
| Alliance | Oliver Napier | 6,970 | 25.4 | +10.7 | |
| Ind. Unionist | Alan Chambers | 2,170 | 7.9 | New | |
| NI Conservatives | Stuart Sexton | 583 | 2.1 | −29.9 | |
| Free ParaLee Clegg Now | Michael Brooks | 108 | 0.4 | New | |
| Independent Voice | Christopher Carter | 101 | 0.4 | New | |
| Natural Law | James Anderson | 100 | 0.4 | −0.2 | |
| Majority | 2,892 | 10.6 | N/A | ||
| Turnout | 27,388 | 38.6 | −26.9 | ||
| Registered electors | 70,872 | ||||
| UK Unionistgain fromUPUP | Swing | ||||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UPUP | James Kilfedder | 19,305 | 42.9 | −2.2 | |
| NI Conservatives | Laurence Kennedy | 14,371 | 32.0 | New | |
| Alliance | Addie Morrow | 6,611 | 14.7 | −4.7 | |
| DUP | Denny Vitty | 4,414 | 9.8 | New | |
| Natural Law | Andrew Wilmot | 255 | 0.6 | New | |
| Majority | 4,934 | 10.9 | +1.2 | ||
| Turnout | 44,956 | 65.5 | +2.7 | ||
| Registered electors | 68,662 | ||||
| UPUPhold | Swing | ||||
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