1949 Northern Ireland general election
The 1949 Northern Ireland general election was held on 19 February 1949. The election became known as the Chapel-gate election because collections were held at churches in the Republic of Ireland to support the Nationalist Party campaign.
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All 52 seats to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland 27 seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Election results by constituency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| (1921–72) |
Politics of Northern Ireland |
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The election was held just after the Republic of Ireland's declaration of a republic. The Unionists were able to use their majority in the Parliament of Northern Ireland to schedule the election at a time when many Protestants felt uneasy about events taking place south of the border, and as a result might be more likely to vote Unionist than for Labour candidates. This appears to have been borne out in the collapse of the Labour vote; the party lost all of its seats in the Commons, and would not return to the Parliament until 1958.
20 MPs were elected unopposed, most of them Ulster Unionists.