Letter: Is pursuing the 'neither' vote in elections a productive strategy for unionists?
A letter from Dr Paul Kingsley:
In September, Jon Tonge and Thomas Loughran of Liverpool University published an interesting paper based on a survey about the ‘neithers’ – those who identify as neither unionist or nationalist in Northern Ireland.
It raises two quite distinct issues:
The good news is that when asked what the long term policy for NI should be, 53.4% of neithers said it was to remain in the United Kingdom, compared with 19.3% who said the future involved reunifying with the rest of Ireland.
That is reasonably encouraging with regard to a border poll.
However, those who favoured the Union made up 43.2% of those who never vote and 52.3% of those who rarely vote.
The challenge will be getting them to the polling station for a border vote.
Is pursuing the neither vote in elections a productive strategy for unionists?
The bad news is that 62.7% of neithers said they had not very much interest in politics or none at all.
Not surprisingly, 62% also said they rarely or never vote.
Only 20% always vote and they tend to support the Alliance or Green parties.
A general strategy by unionists of pursuing the neither vote will often leave them talking to the politically apathetic who have a low level of interest in or knowledge of the key political issues of the day.
Dr Paul Kingsley, Belfast