Back in the summer Sinn Féin’s poll rating showed they had lost a quarter of the votes won in the last Assembly election, and almost a third down on their all-time-high in the 2023 Council elections. Today’s new LucidTalk poll in the Belfast Telegraph reveals the party enjoyed an unprecedented polling boost of 6%. The party owes this to the persistence of the Orange Order and the legal advice of Jamie Bryson.
Sinn Féin is now just one percentage point below its last Assembly performance, and 3 points below its last Council result.
If it hit this figure next May it would emerge with a similar number of MLA’s to last time, possibly one less and probably no more. It would likely drop a handful of Council seats, but not as many as the headline figure suggests since it failed to fully capitalise on its 31% through running too few candidates in a small number of seats.
On the unionist side of the fence, we are now seeing an almost perfect three-way split, with the UUP on 15% and the TUV and DUP each on 14%. This is a situation that can last for only a short time. A designation with around 40% of the vote will always tend to produce one leading party and one alternative, in the NI system of proportional representation with 5-seat constituencies. A third party can only flourish in the long run by replacing either the leader or the alternative.
That will put great strain on the DUP which is stuck in the middle. That was a great place to be when the TUV was a minor irritant, and the DUP could amass transfers from both sides. Now that position is a threat to its existence. Instead of sitting comfortably at the table gorging on other parties’ transfers, it could find itself in the centre of the table roast and sliced, ready to be served up to its rivals.
It’s worth remembering that this predicament long pre-dates Drumcree. Under Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster the strategy was always to protect its TUV flank by positioning itself close to TUV policy. At first Donaldson did the same, but when he came to see that as a dead-end for unionism and switched to backing the Windsor Framework he moved the DUP into direct contention with the TUV. Arguably he left it too late, making the move hard to reconcile with his previous stance. His successor, Gavin Robinson, has tried to maintain that pivot away from TUV positions, but Donaldson’s fall has undermined the party and Drumcree has undermined Robinson.
There will be great pressure in his party to move back into the TUV space and yesterday’s poll results showing Robinson to be the least popular unionist figure of the five tested means he may not have the power to resist.
Here are the polling figures for the DUP and TUV combined.
And here are the two parties separately.
If the DUP decide to tough it out they would probably emerge with a few more seats than the TUV – but that is far from guaranteed. They have access to much greater resources in terms of money, local organisation and an extensive network of local councillors. But they would lose many seats and the TUV would gain several and represent an even bigger threat after the election.
Electoral logic would say they have to take votes back from the TUV and that the only way to do that is move back towards TUV territory – collapsing the Executive and promising not to work after the election with any Sinn Féin figure who may be convicted of an offence.
But that does not come without risk. It might be seen as one flip flop too many, reinforcing the view amongst those who have deserted the DUP that the party is not to be trusted. The TUV could be left looking more credible to such voters.
And could they then lose voters who do not wish to see the institutions fail? Jon Borrows appears to be presenting his party as the alternative for them.
If Burrows can hold that course, and if his party allows him to resist the siren calls of unionist unity (if, indeed, he is willing to resist such calls) he might be able to consolidate or even improve on 15%. Even this figure is likely to lead to some gain.
Yesterday’s poll revealed that a quarter of UUP supporters would like to see the Executive collapsed over Drumcree. There will be strong pulls within the UUP not to move too far from the other two unionist parties.
If he strikes out, he may fail and lose the increased support the polling promises, or he may make the UUP the biggest party of unionism and carve out the possibility for a different approach for unionism.
If he does not strike out, he may pick up a couple of seats but squander the once in a generation to change the face of unionism.
The SDLP will be highly relieved that the Sinn Féin leap cost them only 2% points. 11% would give them a healthy increase on 2022 and should almost certainly keep their seats safe from the Sinn Féin challenge. The current Sinn Féin figure should preserve the transfers the SDLP needs in some constituencies. It is not impossible that they could pick up a seat, but they are so far short of a quota in several constituencies that the extra votes might not translate into additional seats.
The picture is far less rosy for Alliance. A loss of a third of their 2022 first preferences would mean fewer seats.
The SDLP and Alliance are both now very limited in what they can do to affect their fortunes. The SDLP is very dependent on the fortunes of Sinn Féin, it was making headway when the focus was on the perceived non-delivery of the Executive. But there is little that the party can do itself to move attention away from the outworkings of Drumcree and back to the non-workings of the Executive and the parties within it.
For Alliance their problems pre-dated Drumcree. They had suffered as much as Sinn
Féin did from voters’ disappointment and disillusion with the Executive. But unlike Sinn Féin, Drumcree does not offer them a get-out-of-jail card. They had probably left it too late to take any radical step to reposition themselves, such as going into Opposition against the alleged behaviour of other Executive parties blocking progress. Now it would be even more difficult.
Unless there is a change in the political weather Alliance will have to concentrate on leveraging its transfer advantage to save as many seats as it can.
The Greens are still showing an improvement on 2022 and 2023. They will no longer be assisted by reflected credibility from the GB Greens who have dropped back since Burnham replaced Starmer. Although this may never have been much of a factor. Far more likely they have picked up voters because they are not associated with the Executive. If they don’t win Assembly seats themselves, they will provide transfers mainly for Alliance and a proportion for the SDLP.
Once again, I will point out that an NI wide poll can tell us little about what is happening in individual local areas. For PBP it is all about parts of Belfast for the Assembly and Belfast City Council and council seats in Derry and Strabane.
We won’t know how these break down by designation until the full LucidTalk tables are published. For this reason the following chart does not yet show designation figures for this poll.
And finally, all the poll figures are reported rounded to the nearest full percentage point. The margin for error of the poll is 2.3% to a confidence level of 95%.
Michael Hehir is a retired sales and marketing manager. He studied in Northern Ireland but now lives between England and Italy.
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