Bad news for the new DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. A Lucid Talk poll for the Belfast Telegraph has the DUP on 13%, TUV 14% and UUP 16%. Sinn Fein is on 25%, the SDLP on 13% and Alliance on 13%.
..Two key results graphics from the Summer LT NI 'Tracker' poll, as published in today's Belfast Telegraph (@BelTel) – No. 1 is the party vote share scores in this poll, + No. 2 – the party vote share scores in all our polls tracked since the 2017 NI Assembly election… pic.twitter.com/bWyGIINGbW
— LucidTalk (@LucidTalk) August 28, 2021
In recent years polling has been about as accurate as reading chicken entrails *, but it is still a good insight into the state of play as we go into Assembly Elections next year. There is likely no stopping Sinn Fein from taking the First Minister job but I think they will give Conor Murphy the role. I have no basis for that view other than a hunch.
Interesting times indeed.
* This is not a dig at Lucid Talk rather I am talking about polling generally. I believe it is really common for people to say one thing to pollsters and then vote completely different. The only poll that matters is election day.
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
