NI polling update May 23. With some guesswork on council elections!

 LucidTalk has released its latest NI tracker poll on the level of support for parties. You can see the results along with predicted seats below.

 


 

This poll suggests Unionism is strengthening. A quick reading would suggest Sinn Féin and Alliance losing votes to the DUP and independents or very small parties, however it is more likely this poll is suggesting a stronger Unionist turnout. In May 2022 Unionist turnout was poor and just a small shift in favour of Unionism would see a gain of 2 seats.

 

I have predicted just 3 seats changing hands. In this scenario I see the DUP gaining North Antrim and Strangford from Alliance with Alliance gaining East Londonderry from the SDLP.

 

As always trends are more important than a single poll in isolation, below you can see the polling trends since May last year. 

 

 



 

This poll asked about voting intentions for an Assembly election, but we have council elections happening this month. It is difficult to use this to project a council election result however I will give it a go. This poll hasn’t changed too much since the last one, and I used the last one as the basis for my council election predictions, however I had to make some adjustments. Given that independent candidates and smaller parties tend to perform better and the larger parties tend to lose some votes I have based my council election predictions on the following vote share assumption:

 

SF -28

DUP -23.5

Alliance -15

UUP- 11

SDLP – 7

TUV – 5

Greens -2

Aontú -2

PBP – 2

Others -2

Other Unionists – 1

Other Nationalists -1

PUP -0.5

 

You can see my Council prediction below. I made one change on the basis of this new poll suggesting a slightly better performance for Unionism but in reality anyone who can predict these seats within a margin of around 5 seats either way is essentially spot on. 


There is a chance the DUP could remain the largest party at council level. I feel the TUV have possibly missed a chance to win seats in some areas by not selecting candidates and their votes will likely go to the DUP in these areas. The DUP balanced their votes well in May and if they repeat that they could keep candidates ahead of the other unionist candidates and win their transfers. Sinn Féin remain favourites to win the most seats as they will likely win the most votes and, their lead over the other nationalists is potentially overwhelming. My seat prediction has been slightly friendlier to the SDLP but it would not be a surprise to see the SDLP on around 30 seats with Sinn Féin over 130. 



 

 

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