There’s been a lot of debate over wether #NorthernIreland’s birth was imposed or not which is a rather interesting question.

Now there was no referendum in 1920 or opinion polls like we have now but by doing a bit of maths we can possibly infer the strength of feeling. /1 https://twitter.com/news_letter/status/1294233056329465863

Today #NorthernIreland has a population of ~1.8M people & the size of the electorate in the 2019 general election was ~1.2M meaning the size of the electorate is around 66% of the total population. /2

100 years ago the population of what would become #NorthernIreland was ~1.2M so if everyone there had the franchise under the same criteria as today the electorate would have been 792,000 people. /3

To put this all into context the Ulster Covenant was signed by ~470,000 people so if this was the size of the “Pro-Partition” vote in a hypothetical referendum would have won by 59% assuming a 100% turnout. /4

Even if we assume a 65% turnout & the “Pro-Partition” side having a good day that would put things well over 50% in favour of #NorthernIreland’s formation, a 52/49 split would be unlikely. /5

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/chartists/contemporarycontext/electionturnout/

What I’m getting at here is that there was a very large strength of feeling for the desire to be separate from the maschinations of the Home Rulers/Nats in Dublin & one way or another it’s something the maj of the people in whats now #NorthernIreland would have chosen. /6

It was also something they did choose, in the first election of the #NorthernIreland House of Commons where the @uuponline won 40 out of 52 seats in an STV election no less!

Those reps would then go on to vote against joining Southern Ireland
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_Northern_Ireland_general_election
/7

Now of course there are a number of huge caveats in the numbers I presented earlier.

Not only were they rough as a badgers backside, the electorate would have been much smaller due to the much more limited franchise compared to today & WWI would affect numbers also /8

However one thing we can say is that #NorthernIreland’s birth was something that the people here for better or worse chose, it wasn’t imposed from on high & the electorate had other options.

100 year later there’s still people who have yet to come to terms with that choice. /9