Outside City Hall, Trimble mentioned Lagan Valley – a seat Jeffrey Donaldson took comfortably in the last Assembly elections as a UU candidate. Basil McCrea might well galvanise what is left of the pro-Agreement UU vote and take votes from Nationalists who see as Donaldson as the mastermind behind the fall of the Agreement. The UU faithful are puzzled that no one is buying the story. What’s in the back of every journo’s mind is the Belfast Telegraph/Newsnight poll, which put the DUP on 28% in comparison to the UUP on only 16%. Conventional wisdom is that those kinds of upsets just doesn’t happen in an ebbing tide.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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