evidence: As figure 1 illustrates, the question of Northern Ireland’s constitutional future continues to be consequential in shaping voting behaviour (Murphy 2022). Yet, it also shows how the middle ground, largely represented by the Alliance Party, is gaining momentum. At the 2022 Assembly election, the pro-European Union (EU), neither nationalist nor unionist Alliance Party won the biggest gain in vote share, from 9.1% in 2017 to 13.5% in 2022 (O Dochartaigh, 2022; ARK, 2023). This was enough to make the party Northern Ireland’s third largest, ahead of the historically dominant Ulster Unionist Party (O Dochartaigh, 2022). Three events or changes can be interpreted as altering voting behaviour in Northern Ireland away from the dominance of orange and green politics, to a landscape where the middle or third way is growing. These are the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, Brexit and changing identity cleavages.