A historic all female line-up will take their seats in the European Parliament after the count of last Thursday’s vote.
The Alliance Party collected 170,370 votes, 115,000 more than the party received in the 2014 European election.
The quota of 143,112 votes was not reached by any candidate. DUP’s Diane Dodds, who won the first seat after the third count, took a total of 155,422 votes, while Ms Long and Sinn Féin’s Martina Andersons were voted in on the fifth count. Ms Anderson, who topped the poll, emerged with a total of 152,436 votes.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described Mrs Long’s victory as a historic, pro-European vote, which would be “heard across the continent”.
Speaking about the significance of her win, Mrs Long said her party rejected “unionist and nationalist boxes”.
“The people who voted for me came together from right across the community, regardless of unionism, regardless of nationalist, regardless of all those labels,” she said. “I will serve them to the absolute best of my ability – they have my word on that.”
