According to polling, most people planning to cast a first preference vote for the UUP in May’s Assembly election will switch their vote to nationalists before they provide a transfer to other unionist parties.
The UUP secured 10 seats, losing 6 seats despite largely keeping its vote share the same, while the SDLP retained all of its 12 seats. This now means that the combined seat share of Unionist parties (38 seats) is smaller than that of nationalist parties (39 seats). Meanwhile the Alliance Party, which attempts to sit outside the unionist/nationalist divide, fared well, retaining its 8 seats and increasing its vote share. Significantly, almost 70 per cent of voters supported a party that endorsed ‘remain’ in the Brexit referendum, perhaps signalling a coming headache for Theresa May. [...] This is not to say that voters in Northern Ireland are free-floating and untethered from any ethno-nationalist cleavage (typically, over 90 per cent of Catholics vote for nationalist parties and even more Protestants vote for unionist parties). But today’s Northern Irish voters (especially younger ones) think in terms of capability and competence to promote prosperity and welfare. From this perspective, it appears that the Assembly election was more about bedding-down better functioning Northern Irish institutions than moving closer to all-Ireland ones. [...] The gap between moderate unionism and Sinn Féin still remains vast, and securing this community’s consent will be necessary to move closer to a united Ireland. Indeed, Mike Nesbitt, the leader of the UUP who resigned in the wake of his party’s poor performance, declared he would transfer his vote to the SDLP. This was too radical for many unionist supporters who rounded on him for transferring to any nationalist party, even one without the radical legacy of Sinn Féin.