Peter Donaghy

Ok, so here's the *real* NI Assembly Election forecast: [your favourite party] will win all 90 seats. The First Minister will be [you] and the dFM will be [your best friend], you'll go on little adventures together. You'll have all the ice cream you want, they'll abolish bedtime,

Just 197 more sleeps until nerd Christmas

belfasttelegraph.co.ukSinn Féin’s high-stakes gamble in staunchly unionist constituency may not be the big risk it seemsRunning Chris Hazzard in Strangford in next year’s Assembly election may at first glance look like a risky move for the politician and his party.

My forecast model has SDLP as heavy favourites in Strangford. But - it assumes the SDLP will outpoll SF in 1st preferences in Strangford in most model runs. In the scenarios where SF won more 1st prefs than the SDLP, SF won a seat most of the time. So I could be wrong here.

Belfast Telegraph@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Running Chris Hazzard in Strangford in next year’s Assembly election may at first glance look like a risky move for the politician and his party, writes Suzanne Breen. But this isn’t a blind gamble by Sinn Féin.

I ran SF with 2 candidates in Belfast South & Mid Down through 1000 runs of the forecast model and it didn't rate their chances of winning 2 very highly. The most likely outcome was no change.

Northern Ireland Elects@nielects.com

🚨 NEW: Pat Cullen and Deirdre Hargey to stand in Belfast South and Mid Down for Sinn Féin #AE27 @sinnfeinireland

Nice

Richard Cantwell@manaboutcouch.bsky.social

So the Irish Government launched the 'Intelligence:Applied' programme at the AI Summit last week. Buried in the aspirational goals (see here: www.gov.ie/en/departmen...) is this particularly interesting nugget. It looks like the #Eircode database may become #OpenData! Grain of salt required.

irishtimes.comWhy Halloween pumpkins are smaller this year, and three viral hacks to carve themGet your hammer, your whisk and your biscuit cutters ready before you embark on this year’s pumpkin adventures

Homer Simpson, smiling politely

The Irish Times@irishtimes.com

belfasttelegraph.co.ukAndrew Muir might not permit a public register of toxic land... despite agreeing that should happenAsbestos, arsenic and lead are in soil across Northern Ireland, but Stormont doesn’t want you to know where

DAERA released new data on Lough Neagh algae blooms recently. Cranfield returned an estimated chlorophyll concentration of 1,377 µg/L in September, but the probe is only rated to 500µg/L, above which readings are unreliable. 3.6 Roentgen, not great not terrible etc.

Peter Donaghy reposted

Sam McBride

@sjamcbride.bsky.social

Andrew Muir might block a public register of toxic land - despite agreeing there should be one. Asbestos, arsenic & lead are in soil across Northern Ireland, but Stormont doesn’t want us to know where; Muir doesn't seem like he's going to change that.

From the Assembly election model - this was the estimated number of Executive ministries by each party and designation (assuming each party takes their entitlement and Justice isn't allocated by d'Hondt)

Executive ministries if Justice is distributed by d'Hondt

Peter Donaghy reposted

Nicholas Whyte 白怀珂

@nwhyte.bsky.social

If we allocate seven ministerial seats on this outcome by D’Hondt, it’s 3 for SF and one each for the DUP, UUP, Alliance and SDLP. Only two Unionists out of seven. But the 3rd SF is very tight with the 2nd DUP; and one less MLA for the SDLP would mean one more ministerial place for the rest.

Peter Donaghy@peterdonaghy.bsky.social

The slightly more chaotic chart of movement between parties since 1998, and the 2027 forecast.

Belfast is wild because you can't get home by public transport after 9pm but the courts are open to adjudicate on parading disputes 24/7

I made a couple of changes to the Assembly Election forecast model. It has increased the estimated number of Unionist seats slightly, but Nationalist was the largest designation 68% of the time, Unionist 10% of the time, with a tie in 22% of the model runs.

View full thread

The slightly more chaotic chart of movement between parties since 1998, and the 2027 forecast.

This was the single most common outcome. Mostly DUP losses, to a mix of UUP, TUV and SF. Alliance lost 2 to the SDLP and 1 to the UUP.

This was the distribution of seat win probabilities by designation from the Assembly Election forecast.

The best case scenario for Nationalism was 45 seats - this happened in 0.5% of the 1000 model runs. It would look like this or something similar.

The best case scenario for Unionism was 41 seats, which happened in 0.2% of the model runs. It would look something like this.

One thing I'm never ever doing again is an NI Local Election forecast model. Godspeed to all you public-spirited oddballs wanting to get involved with local government but I'm not getting involved. Thank you for your service though 🫡

A small change to the Assembly Election forecast model - it wasn't using a unionist transfer model for PUP votes. Fixed this and it had a small impact on EB, UB and EL/D, and increased overall unionist expected seats by 0.4.

View full thread

The model assumes a unionist -> nationalist swing in Upper Bann. If this doesn't materialise an SF gain could be at the expense of Alliance.

East L/Derry looks set to be very close.

I was wondering why the model was so bullish on SF's chances of a third in North Belfast. They usually get 3 elected under quota by having all their candidates ahead of the 2nd DUP candidate after Alliance are elected and everyone else is eliminated.

In Strangford an unwind of the tactical Alliance vote from 2024 usually sees the SDLP elected on Alliance transfers when the 2nd Alliance candidate is eliminated. It could go the other way round as well.

This was the most common outcome in the Assembly Election Forecast runs. The DUP on a net loss of 4; gaining W Belfast from PBP but losing Foyle and E Antrim to UUP, and Strangford and South Antrim to the TUV. SDLP gain from Alliance in Strangford; SF gain 3 (N Belfast, Upper Bann, E L/Derry).

If SF can flip the DUP seats in Upper Bann and North Belfast, and the Independent Unionist seat in East L/Derry, then Nationalist will likely be the largest designation in the Assembly; these are the key races. Strangford could be very interesting too.

Hundreds of millions of simulated ballots later, these were the results of the Assembly Election forecast. The PBP seat in West Belfast was the seat most likely to change hands, the second Alliance seat in Strangford the most marginal.

The projected vote share by party and designation.

Simulating 1000 Northern Ireland Assembly Elections with hundreds of millions of individual ballots. Imagine the discourse going on here.

Area man picks the worst possible time to finish his NI Assembly Election forecast model

Peter Donaghy reposted

Jordan

@jordanpfot.bsky.social

Danny Tommo leaving Patriot Platform to go and run a Covid conscious lesbian pub in Northern Ireland.

This post is unavailable.

16 Sept

It's only one data point and obviously very early days, but today's wage data from Canada shows a downtick in the software salary premium for Q2 2026. Possibly an early signal of AI-driven disruption in the tech labour market?

15 Sept

I've accidentally made the most boring chart in history - monthly production of cardboard boxes in Poland

13 Sept

I've made a new website that tracks data over time to test claims about where the world is heading; things like "AI is going to disrupt the labour market" or "the current El Niño event will lead to higher food prices" salmonofdata.com

11 Sept

It's striking how much schools in London have improved since 2009. The English regions have more or less stayed still, which is impressive given significant declines elsewhere. Scotland, Wales and NI are all doing very poorly by comparison.

This year's PISA survey asked questions on AI use at school and the results are clear: increased AI use in school is associated with lower scores.

A similar result for pupils in Scotland - the higher the use of AI in school, the lower the results for Reading, Maths and Science.

The decline in PISA scores in Northern Ireland is almost entirely attributable to grammar schools. Scores in secondary schools are broadly unchanged since 2009, whilst scores at grammar schools are down an average of 40 points; equivalent to two years of education.

Why are the devolved administrations failing so badly at education?

aidisplacementtracker.comAI Job Displacement TrackerPublic evidence on white-collar labour displacement. Historical data and frozen scenarios through 2029.

6 Sept

I've seen a lot of discussion about the potential impact of AI on white collar jobs, but hadn't seen any tracking of how it might show up in the data. I made 8 metrics to track until 2030 that could provide evidence for or against AI job displacement. aidisplacementtracker.com

14 Aug

With their 3 candidates receiving 28, 18, and 15 votes, the Monster Raving Loony Party did an admirable job of balancing the Loony vote in Clacton. Shame that the single member first-past-the-post thing will take the shine off the achievement. Might have been a bit shy of a quota as well.

12 Aug

Old man yells at cloud

8 Aug

Walking around Belfast with a pint of Beamish is a 10/10 experience, would recommend

Peter Donaghy reposted

Mark Wallace

@wallaceme.bsky.social

7 Aug

In case you thought you’d already heard academia’s worst thing this week: you were wrong.

7 Aug

Meath because of Tayto Park. Kildare because it's flat. Donegal because people move there when they retire. We can recreate it in the aggregate.

Darach Ó Séaghdha@darach.bsky.social

What county is "the Florida of Ireland"?

Peter Donaghy reposted

Rico Charges

@nochorus.bsky.social

6 Aug

bsky.app/profile/plea...

Susumoomf Yokota@pleatsplease.bsky.social

"oh read the financial papers to get the real news" socialists when you show them Bloomberg is trying to exoticize chartreuse

6 Aug

Realised when walking around the Fleadh: Belfast has a median age of 36, which means that the majority of the population has no memory of what Belfast was like before the 1994 ceasefires.