Martin McGuinness (not Michelle O’Neill) describes the DUP as bigots in Mid Ulster

My analysis of Mid Ulster is a little harsher for Sinn Fein than most. But I can’t see much bounce for the new leader since last June since Mid Ulster was the constituency of the previous SF leader, Martin McGuinness. They’re significantly short of three quotas too. 

In their favour, they have an election machine second to none. Nor are they afraid to use marked registers to help them figure out who has voted and who hasn’t.  Despite the fact that it’s not, strictly speaking, legal.

This precision marketing is key to their enduring ground war electoral success. It has helped them buck the weather, and confound their critics time and again. For instance, take West Belfast where the machine is at its most confident:

So yesterday, this came in from a Slugger reader in Mid Ulster (name and address withheld):

 

This is not what the party has been sending out across the constituency. Those marked registers give the party a huge advantage in terms of segmenting the local political market. This particular voter had never had such a communication from the party before.

If it demonstrates anything it is that the party thinks Martin rather than the new (and very local) leader is still the main pull. But then look carefully at the text? It describes SF’s putative partners in government as being guilty of crude bigotry.

Not quite a crude 2015 ‘remember you’re a Catholic’ campaign in North Belfast.

But then again it is not exactly advertising a particularly appetising coalition of the willing either.

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.