So, the results are in, and a new House of Keys is preparing to face the challenges that lie ahead. With such a small number of MHKs each election, you need to be quite careful about seeing information where there is just variation. Nonetheless, a few thoughts about the results of the 2026 election.
A more male House of Keys? Slightly.
The last election resulted in a record number of women MHKs, with 10 women sitting. This was on the back of 16 women standing, itself a record number of women standing. This election saw even more women standing – 26, being 31% of the total candidates rather than the 25% of 2021.
A higher proportion of women candidates has not translated into a higher proportion of women MHKs, with 8 elected. Of these 8, 4 were incumbents. So success for both women candidates, and women incumbents, very much tracks the success rate for candidates generally.
Nonetheless, despite this not being a departure from the century long norm that women who stand are successful at broadly the same rate as men, there are fewer women MHKs. In itself, should this be a cause for concern?
The global literature suggests that there is a critical mass, beyond which women in the legislature “becomes normal, widely accepted and irreversible” (Fraenkel, 2006). Thirty percent is often suggested as the point at which critical mass is reached. This was reached for the first time in 2021, and has been retained in 2026. In the Manx context, it may be that critical mass was earlier than 2021: there is some evidence, from the Women in Manx Politics project which I led, that the election of five women in 2016 caused a significant shift in the culture of the chamber.
A new House of Keys? Ish.
Of the 24 MHKs elected, 15 are new to the Keys, and 9 are incumbents who retained their seats (although may be changing where they sit physically in the House of Keys).
The House of Keys is considerably more volatile than the House of Commons. In that context, only 9 MHKs being re-elected is not unusual. In 2021 10 were re-elected, and in 2016, 8. It represents a considerably more stable House than in 1986 (the election with the fewest incumbents staying in the House), when only 4 incumbents were elected; but considerably less than 2001 (the election with the most incumbents staying in the House), when 18 incumbents retained their seats.
As noted earlier, this election had a record number of candidates come forward. Looking at success rates, the 1919-2021 data indicates a 78% success rate for incumbents, against a 46% success rate for candidates as a whole. In this election, reflecting the unusually large field, we have a 28.92% success rate for candidates as a whole; and a 56.25% success rate for incumbents. So incumbents retain a very substantial advantage, even where the success rate for both incumbents and newcomers has dropped.
A Keys of Independents? Definitely.
Again, an election dominated by Independent candidates has led to a Keys overwhelmingly composed of Independents. Only the Manx Labour Party enjoyed any success, retaining 2 seats (having fielded four candidates); while Liberal Vannin lost its only MHK (having fielded four candidates); and the two new parties who contested the election did not gain any (with Transform fielding 2, and The Change Movement 5). Party candidates represented 18% of the candidates, and secured 8.33% of the seats. This substantial underperformance compared with independents does not suggest strong party institutionalisation anytime soon.
The youngest MHK ever? I’m going yes, with one reservation.
Daniel Davison was elected for Glenfaba and Peel in an unusually close poll (with the top three candidates polling 1232, 1147, and 1073). At 18, he has been reported variously as the youngest every person to be elected to the House of Keys, and the youngest MHK in history. These are different claims, and I am more confident of one that the other.
There are many ways of understanding “elected” – for instance, MLCs are appointed through election by the House of Keys, but their role is often criticised on the basis of their being unelected. If we take the general meaning of “elected by the general public”, I think Davison is the youngest person to be elected as an MHK.
When elections to the House of Keys were introduced by the House of Keys Election Act 1866, candidacy was limited to property-holding males of full age (s.46). Before 1971 full age (also described as majority) was 21. So even though finding the ages of candidates and MHKs is not always straightforward, I am confident that no one younger than 21 was elected between 1866 and 1971. In 1971 the age of majority was changed to 18 by Part I of the Family Law Reform (Isle of Man) Act 1971. Since 1971 there have been some comparatively young MHKs (Peter Karran was hailed as the youngest ever when he was elected just before his 25th birthday in 1985, while Juan Watterson was 26 when elected in 2006), but no other 18 year olds.
Whether he will be the youngest ever MHK is a little less clear. Before 1866 MHKs were elected mainly by other MHKs, and there were definitely political families with multigenerational expectations of joining the Keys. Records of the unelected Keys are much less accessible than those of the modern Keys, but I think we can find at least one person, from a prominent Manx family, appointed at the age of 21.
John Christian Curwen was born in 1756, and according to AW Moore’s “Extracts from the Journals of the self-elected House of Keys”, entered the Keys in 1777, sitting as a member for 51 years. Christian Curwen was born on 17 July 1756. It is *possible* he was appointed to the Keys before he was 21, but his signature does not appear in any of the 1777 legislation, and so being appointed very soon after he turned 21 seems likely. If so, there may have been a norm of only appointing MHKs who had reached the age of majority, which pre-1971 was 21.
So, I cannot be categorically sure, without a substantial project to find the ages of everyone appointed to the Keys before 1866, but I think it very likely that Davison will also be the youngest person to serve as an MHK.
Standing for two seats did not result in an MHK elected to two seats.
Nigel Dunmore stood for both Ramsey and Garff. He polled 286 votes in Garff (against the lower MHK elected on 968), and 162 in Ramsey (against the lower MHK elected on 1395). So this may not have been an appealing tactic to his two electorates.
English law does not allow a candidate to stand in a General Election for the House of Commons in two constituencies. The Representation of the People Act 1983 sch.1 para 8.3 requires a candidate to state that that he or she “is not a candidate at an election for any other constituency the poll for which is to be held on the same day as that for the election to which the consent relates”. I cannot find any equivalent piece of Manx legislation relating to elections preventing this; nor discussion in election law or the Standing Orders of the House of Keys or Tynwald about what would happen if a candidate were successful in both seats.
It may be worth either stating how a doubly-successful candidate is to be treated (which may be quite complex), or ruling out candidates standing for two seats in the same General Election by drawing on the existing English model.
Small numbers of votes count.
This is Inevitable in a system with such small constituencies, but there were a number of close polls; albeit not record breaking. The closest result was in Douglas East, with Joney Faragher being elected on 682, and Dave Mackey not being elected on 632.
The constituencies for the Keys are intended to produce constituencies of similar sizes, so that a vote is of roughly equal power whatever constituency you are in. Differences in the turnout between constituencies, and differences in the number of candidates can, however, result in the votes needed to become an MHK varying considerably from constituency to constituency. This time, the candidate with the most votes who was not elected was Steve Crowther with 1251 in Arbory, Castletown and Malew. The MHK elected with the least votes was Joney Faragher with 682 in Douglas East.
So, what next?
Knowing who the 24 MHKs will be does not tell us much about who the next Manx Government will be led by. Appointing the Chief Minister will be one of the first acts of the new House of Keys when it meets in October. In the Manx system, with only a marginal role for parties, MHKs need to decide which of their colleagues to support to become Chief Minister.
There is no formal role for voters – unlike Parliamentary systems with strong parties, voters cannot know in advance how their vote could translate into a particular head of government; unlike the Kiribati system, voters are not asked to choose between candidates for head of government once the legislature has formed; and unlike some Presidential systems, electors do not vote for the head of government directly.
