North's Assembly Votes 'Prioritised'

The first ballot boxes are being opened at eight centres across the North this morning, as counting gets underway on votes cast in the Stormont Assembly elections.

The first results are not expected until this afternoon as around 1,200 election workers count votes from over 4,000 ballot boxes.

The first Assembly results should be announced this afternoon or evening, but the brown Council papers will not be counted until next week - with local representatives facing a nail-biting wait.

Due to both polls being proportional representation voting, with several count stages, the final results of the new Assembly won't even be known until Saturday.

Votes cast in the UK-wide referendum on the AV voting system are also to be tallied later.

The Northern Ireland result should be known this evening, but it will be the total result across the UK, which will determine how MPs are elected in the future.

Turnout figures were carefully monitored in the wake of a low-key election campaign.

As numbers of voters are expected to be low, the performance of the Ulster Unionist Party and the nationalist SDLP who both trail their larger rivals will be a critical factor.

The minority Green party hopes to retain its one-seat, while the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party, which once had hopes of derailing the power-sharing experiment, now hopes it can at least gain a presence at Stormont.

However, the Alliance Party is looking at making gains over the last poll in 2007 when the DUP took 36 seats, Sinn Fein 28, the Ulster Unionists 18, the SDLP 16 and Alliance seven.

(JG/BMcC)