The Northern Ireland elections for the Stormont assembly could result in a historic shift in the balance of power.
With less than a fortnight to go before the election on 5 May Sinn Féin is in pole position to overtake the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and become the largest single party in the devolved government.
Why is this significant?
If the projections are realised at the ballot box it would mean Sinn Féin’s Northern Ireland leader, Michelle O’Neill, would become first minister. That would mean a party that is avowedly republican with past links to the IRA, that favours a united Ireland, and that retains a policy of absenteeism in relation to its MPs in Westminster, leading the government in one of the four countries of the UK.
What are the polls saying?
The latest of a series of LucidTalk tracker polls for the Belfast Telegraph put Sinn Féin at 26% of the vote (up one point), followed by the DUP at 19% (up two points), followed by the centrist Alliance party at 16%. The unionist vote is splitting three ways – with the DUP followed by the Ulster Unionist party at 13% and the Traditional Unionist Voice party, which offers a more radical antiprotocol policy than the DUP, at 9%.
The SDLP was flat at 11%. Other parties, including the Greens and People Before Profit, and independents and others came in at 2% of the vote each.
Another survey by the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool suggests the emergence of a secular unionism among younger voters – people from both Protestant and Catholic traditions fed up with identity politics but supporting the union.
If Sinn Féin win does this mean a united Ireland is closer?
Although this is a narrative being pushed by some unionist parties to scare voters into supporting them at the polls, the reality is a referendum pitting the status quo against a united Ireland would be a very serious move and is not on the horizon.
What would it mean for the DUP?
Peter Shirlow, a professor at the Institute of Irish Studies, says that while many unionists fear a united Ireland, a win for Sinn Féin will be a “wake-up call” for unionism for a different reason. He said his research over the past decade showed the growth of a secular unionism among people within the Protestant and Catholic heritages who want to stay in the UK but who will not use their vote “just to keep the other side out”.
“It might be a unionist electoral crisis, but not a constitutional crisis. It will be the death throes of Protestant unionism, a rejection, not of the constitutional position but people saying ‘enough’, we support the union, but we won’t vote for homophobes, we won’t vote for misogynists, we won’t vote for this never-ending crisis politics.
“It doesn’t seem that people are seeing this as a big opportunity for nationalism either. Sinn Féin is Sinn Féin but parties like the SDLP are flat as a pancake,” he says.
One thing parties have got to get away from, and particularly unionist parties, “is the misnomer that rights are concessions” to the other side, he says.
His tracker panel found that two-thirds of nationalists believed that if “devolved politics worked better people would focus less on the constitutional question” of whether Northern Ireland was part of the UK or Ireland.
What else would a first place for Sinn Féin mean?
It could also prompt the collapse of the assembly entirely.
Under the power-sharing system, the biggest and second biggest party get the first and deputy first minister positions respectively – and one minister cannot be in position without the other.
The DUP has repeatedly refused to say if it would accept filling the role of deputy first minister if pushed into second place amid fears it could be accused of “propping up” a Sinn Féin government. Although the first minister and deputy first minister are equal in power, words matter in Northern Ireland. Attempts to eliminate any connotations of hierarchy by making the posts joint first minister failed in Westminster last year.
If the DUP were the second largest party after the election but refused to put forward someone for the deputy first minister position, the executive could not function.
• This article was amended on 26 April 2022 to correct a reference to “deputy prime minister” to deputy first minister.
