NI Pols

The UUP have bounced from a low of 9.3% (Europe 2019) to a high of 14.1% (local government 2019) in the last election cycle with current polling putting them at around the 14% mark. If the UUP polled 14% in May this would be a rise of over 1% in their vote share and, coupled with a decline in the DUP share, should secure some extra seats. In reality the UUP are unlucky not to have had more seats last time around, they won more votes than the SDLP and yet won fewer seats. There are some local factors at play in much of that but if recent tends continue and polling is accurate then the UUP are looking at some handy gains.    The stark difference in UUP results is down to many reasons. Mike Nesbit was party leader for the 2017 Assembly election, since then 3 others have held the top job. The UUP has been through a tough period of deciding what kind of unionist party it wants to be. In addition each of the elections in the last cycle have been fought under difficult circumstances, whether

  With May’s scheduled Assembly election possibly taking place a bit sooner here are some points to look out for and a rough estimate of how the parties may fare based on recent polling.   ·         Poor polling for DUP means Sinn Fein are favourites to win the most seats and claim the First Minister position ·         Alliance look to make gains and become the third (they will ambitiously say second) largest party ·         Nationalists cannot gain from unionists, but there are some potential unionist gains from nationalists.  ·         Transfers will be very important, as ever   What are the parties aiming for? All of the following is based on the 2 most recent LucidTalk opinion polls which produced broadly similar results. A Liverpool poll produced very different results last year, but, appeared to show similar trends to LucidTalk.    SF ·         Consolidate polling popularity and become NI’s largest party ·         Mitigate potential losses with excellent balancing ·         Win b

Sinn Fèin are the favourites to become the largest party in May’s Assembly election. Having been nationalism’s largest party for a while it would be a major propaganda win for them to have Michelle O’Neill as First Minister. Things may not be quite as straightforward as everyone expects though.    LucidTalk polling has had Sinn Fèin sitting on 24-25% consistently for a while now. Liverpool university’s poll had them just a bit below this mark. In the last election cycle LucidTalk overestimated Sinn Fein by just a little bit, but the consistency of the current polling tells us that Sinn Fèin’s support has been holding steady for a while now. Now 2% does not sound like anything dramatic but there could be a big difference in terms of seats if Sinn Fèin poll 23% rather than 25%. In the 2017 Assembly Election Sinn Fèin won all of their marginals. If they won the same share of the vote as last time there would still be at least 1, probably 2, seats at risk and so a drop of a few percentage