Sinn Fein leads in poll ahead of election

Bloomberg

Sinn Fein looks set to become the largest party in Northern Ireland’s assembly, potentially marking a historic shift in the region’s political balance, according to a poll ahead of next week’s election.
The nationalist party, whose ultimate goal is a united Ireland, drew 26% support in LucidTalk’s final poll for the Belfast Telegraph ahead of the May 5 vote. That’s 6 points ahead of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which gained 1 point from a March poll to 20%. Sinn Fein’s popularity was unchanged.
Such an outcome could result in Sinn Fein choosing Northern Ireland’s First Minister for the first time since the power-sharing government was established following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement — a seismic shift in a region historically dominated by unionist parties. It could also have wider ramifications for the UK’s negotiations with the European Union over the region’s trading arrangements.
The DUP has campaigned for the removal of the Northern Irish Protocol — the part of the Brexit agreement which deals with the region. In February, DUP First Minister Paul Givan resigned in protest against the trading arrangements and the party has said it won’t participate in the power-sharing executive if the protocol remains in place.
If Sinn Fein comes out on top, “it really would be symbolically significant,” said Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen’s University Belfast. “But the other issue is how that’s responded to, particularly by the British government.”
Under the power-sharing model, the first minister and deputy first minister have equal powers and one cannot be in place without the other. Effectively, one must be a unionist and the other a nationalist.
Meanwhile, wrangling over how to keep Northern Ireland’s trade flowing with Ireland after Britain’s departure from the EU played into Sinn Fein’s key message and has helped boost nationalist sentiment.
The assembly gets to vote on key parts of the protocol issue in 2024, so this election could be critical to that. The DUP has lost support to other unionist parties as well as to centrists. The Ulster Unionist Party and Alliance Party were tied in third position at 14% each in the poll of 1,708 voters conducted April 22-24.