Sinn Féin maintains a six-point lead less than a week before the Northern Ireland election, according to a poll released today, as it seeks to become the first Irish nationalist party to win the most seats in its local parliament under British province sovereignty.
Support for Sinn Fein, which Northern Ireland wants to leave the UK and join the adjoining Republic of Ireland, has remained the same since the start of the campaign, at 26%, according to a Belfast Telegraph poll. / LucidTalk.
This marks a slight decline from the record 27.9% secured by Sinn Fein in the last election in 2017, but the party has been boosted by declining support over the past 18 months to its closest rival, the Democratic Union Party ( DUP).
The DUP, Britain’s largest pro-British party, came close to Sinn Féin with 28.1% of the vote in the 2017 election, but fell to 20% according to today’s poll, up one percentage point in the last month.
The main nationalist and union opponents in Northern Ireland are forced to share power under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Peace Accord, which largely ended three decades of violence in the region.
However, the DUP has made it clear that it will join a new government that will share power if the Northern Ireland Protocol on trade relations with the rest of the UK in the post-Brexit era is completely revised.
Talks between Britain and the EU have reached a stalemate over the removal of many controls on goods from the rest of the UK, and were agreed in the protocol, a British minister said today.
In the latest poll, the Northern Ireland All-Community Alliance Party and the more hardline Traditional United Voice (TUV) party seem ready to increase their turnout further than in the last election, securing 14% and 9% respectively.
Ulster’s most moderate Unionist Party (UUP) is at 14% with the Irish Nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) at 10%.
Today’s poll contains some encouraging facts about the DUP with 75% of TUV voters and 52% of the UUP saying that their second preference would be the DUP.
Under Northern Ireland’s proportional representation system, candidates can garner excess votes from those elected or excluded, thus securing a chance to win the final seats in the multi-member constituencies.
SOURCE: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
Source: Capital
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