Does the latest Assembly Election polling suggest any change?



The latest LucidTalk tracker poll has released the results of its survey on current party support. The main takeaways are:

 

·       DUP winning back support from the TUV and independent Unionists

·       Disaster for the SDLP on 7%. The TUV polled more than 7% and only won one seat in May!

·       SF consolidates it’s position

·       Further growth for Alliance at the expense of independents and smaller parties.

·       UUP stand still, which I think they’ll be content with given Beattie’s leadership needs to be seen as a long time project to win back Alliance and Green voters. 

 

In all not much has changed and only the DUP resurgence falls outside the margins of error of 2.7%. As always we need to look for trends in these polls. So trends to watch out for are:

 

·       The battle between the DUP and TUV

·       SF cannibalising the nationalist vote as the SDLP slip further

·       Growth of the centre ground parties (though on 19 % that hasn’t changed much since May, Alliance are simply winning the bulk of the support)

·       No real change in the battle between blocs. (Unionist turnout was low in May so there is still some way to go for Unionist parties to win over non-voters from May). 

 

The biggest criticism of the Assembly right now is that it is not sitting, the DUP have refused to nominate a Deputy First Minister until the NI Protocol has been fixed or scrapped. A decision that is proving to be popular with unionists. The same poll suggested 82% of unionist voters supported the DUP’s position and this is reflected in the party support section of the poll with TUV voters returning to the DUP. The DUP will feel vindicated in this approach for now however, it can have long term consequences with younger voters flocking to Alliance.

 

The SDLP have some serious work to do to win back support. It is unthinkable that they only win 7% of the vote but on such a result they would risk losing even more seats with South Down and East Londonderry under serious threat to SF and Alliance. 

 

My seat prediction sees SF gain 1 seat (South Down from the SDLP), the DUP gain 1 seat (North Antrim from Alliance, and Alliance gain 1 seat (East Londonderry from the SDLP). The SDLP loses 2 seats and everyone else stands still.

 

There are other seats in play on these results such as Upper Bann as SF go for a gain at the expense of Alliance but that is unlikely given Alliance’s continued growth. The TUV will target Strangford, despite a drop in their vote they likely lost this seat due to the sheer number of Unionist candidates standing and transfers splitting between them all, though Alliance remain favourites to retain the seat. Peter Donaghy suggested on Twitter that SF may go for a fourth in Mid Ulster but it is difficult to imagine the SDLP losing that seat. The Unionist seat is safe and transfers would favour the SDLP. 

 

In all, another Assembly election is unlikely to deliver any significant changes, even the changes I have predicted are tight calls despite the SDLP vote slipping further. The parties will watch these polls with interest as Local Government elections approach in May 2023. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Westminster election in NI

Image
  We all know the headlines, Ian Paisley lost his seat, the DUP lost Lagan Valley, Alex Easton unseated Stephen Farry and Sinn Féin won the most seats, but what are the interesting takes from this election and what should we look for in the future? Tactical voting In GB the election will be known for a huge amount of tactical voting with Labour winning a landslide on just 35% of the vote, but tactical voting did not as have much of an influence in Northern Ireland. Parties stepped aside in North down (DUP, TUV & SF), Fermanagh and South Tyrone (DUP & TUV), Belfast East (SF), Belfast South and Mid Down (SF), and Lagan Valley (SF). In North Down Alex Easton won with a 7,000 vote majority and clearly took votes from Alliance as well as the other unionists. The Nationalist vote is considered strong if it tops 1,000 in North Down so Sinn Féin voters would have had limited impact by voting for Alliance anyway. The DUP still probably have hopes of winning Easton back to the party a
Read more

NI Parliamentary electorate at the beginning of 2024.

Image
  2024 will definitely be a general election year for the UK, and will be the first election fought on the new constituency boundaries. I have had a look at how many voters are currently registered for Parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland and compared that to the register at the time of December 2019 election. Unfortunately the electoral office is still posting updates of the register based on the previous boundaries, however this is useful for a comparison to 2019 and for showing how necessary the boundary changes are. I had hoped to map the wards onto the new boundaries, but it seems some wards have also changed making an accurate comparison impossible at this stage.   There are currently 1,349,229 registered voters in Northern Ireland for a parliamentary election, this is an increase of 4.1% or 52,922 voters since December 2019.    Based on the previous constituency boundaries the largest constituency would have been Upper Bann with 86,920 voters compared to just 67,276 voter
Read more

A brief look at the size of Northern Ireland’s new constituencies ahead of the July 2024 General Election.

Image
  The General Election on 4 th May 2024 will be the first time we go to the polls the new constituency boundaries in place. Constituency boundaries were changed to make the UK’s electoral boundaries more equal in size. Each constituency must fall with the range of 69,724 – 77,062 voters due to the Uk average constituency size across 645 (not 650) constituencies is 73,393, so a 5% margin either side of this figure. Between England and Scotland 5 constituencies are exempt from this rule due to geographical reasons (Scottish Islands, Isle of Wight etc.) Northern Ireland was also granted a further 5% margin due to geographical constraints with more than half the constituencies either bordering the Republic of Ireland or the sea, however the commission did not need to use this extra leeway, opting instead to split some wards.* The boundary commission review used the electoral register from 2 nd March 2022 and since then (as of May 2024) Northern Ireland has added 55,673 voters. Some cons
Read more