After the 1918 election, Sinn Féin invited all those elected for constituencies in Ireland to sit as TDs in Dáil Éireann rather than in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.[1] All those elected for Irish constituencies were included in the roll of the Dáil but only those elected for Sinn Féin sat in the First Dáil.[2] In May 1921, the Dáil passed a resolution declaring that elections to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland and the House of Commons of Southern Ireland would be used as the election for the Second Dáil and that the First Dáil would be dissolved on the assembly of the new body.[3] The graduates of Queen's would then have been represented in the Dáil by the four-seat constituency of Queen's University of Belfast, which also returned no representatives for Sinn Féin.
University constituencies had existed in the United Kingdom Parliament and its predecessors since 1603 and in 1918 Queen's was enfranchised as such. When the Parliament of Northern Ireland was established, the same franchise was preserved - see Queen's University of Belfast (Northern Ireland Parliament constituency).
As with most other Northern Ireland seats in this period, the electorate was heavily inclined towards the Ulster Unionists, with no contests for the Westminster seat taking place at all in the interwar years.
^ abcdefghCraig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 675. ISBN0-900178-06-X.