NI council elections: Polls close after 'steady' turnout

The polls have closed in the elections for 462 new members of Northern Ireland's 11 district councils.

Earlier the Electoral Office described voting as "steady". A total of 819 candidates were standing.

Polling stations opened at 07:00 BST and closed at 22:00 BST in the proportional representation election.

Turnout reports from polling stations at 17:00 BST ranged from a low of 15% in east Belfast to as high as 36% in one venue in the north of the city.

The final turnout in the last council elections five years ago was just over 51%.

Full lists of the candidates standing in each council area can be found on the Electoral Office's website.

A total of 1,305,553 people were eligible to vote.

• How the BBC reports polling day

The single transferable vote (STV) system is used in council elections, in which voters rank candidates by numerical preference.

Voters marked their ballot with 1, 2, 3 and so on and could indicate as many or as few preferences as they wanted.

Voters will decide who takes the 462 seats that are available across 11 councils

Candidates are then elected according to the share of the vote they receive.

Analysis

By Mark Devenport, BBC News NI Political Editor

In advance of this election there had been some concern expressed that the turnout might be down, perhaps due to public disenchantment with politics, perhaps because for the first time in more than two decades these council elections were not happening in tandem with another contest.

In the event the good weather seems to have brought the voters out in force, with reports of people having to queue to get into some polling stations.

So it may be we will match the turnout in the last council election five years ago, which was 51%.

Counting begins in the morning, and results will start to be declared during the afternoon. But the full makeup of our new councils won't be clear until Saturday.

The number of candidates was down from the 905 people who put their names forward for the previous council elections five years ago.

Counting in the elections will begin on Friday morning.

BBC News NI will cover the latest election results and analysis on its website, mobile app and on Facebook and Twitter on Friday and throughout the weekend.

There will also be special election programmes on BBC Radio Ulster from 16:00 on Friday and 10:00 on Saturday and on BBC Radio Foyle from 17:00 on Friday.

Television coverage will be on BBC One Northern Ireland at 15:30 on Friday, BBC Two Northern Ireland at 19:30 on Friday and 10:00 on Saturday, with an hour-long Sunday Politics programme on the same channel at 11:00 on Sunday.