To make parallels with the British House of Lords, members of the Senate sat on red benches.

Twenty-four members elected by the House of Commons of Northern Ireland using the Single Transferable Vote (STV), elected in blocks of twelve with each senator's term lasting for two parliaments (i.e. two terms of the House of Commons) and two ex-officio members: the Lord Mayor of Belfast and Mayor of Londonderry.

[4] At the subsequent election, voting papers from the Nationalist MPs and George Henderson were deemed to have been submitted late, and were not considered.

All these members had given a high preference to the Nationalist candidate, Vincent Devoto, and a subsequent analysis of the transfers showed that these would otherwise have been sufficient to elect him.

With the addition of the Unionist Lord Mayor of Belfast Corporation and Mayor of Londonderry Corporation, together with boycotts of the Commons at various times by nationalist parties and fragmentation of the opposition into some parties too small to elect a Senator alone, the upper house proved to be even more heavily Unionist than the lower house.