Unionism split all the worse because it disguises fact unionism is still ahead of nationalism

An obvious observation to make about the weekend poll in Northern Ireland is what it tells us about polling generally.

Is anyone in the Province regularly carrying out political polling other than LucidTalk? And if not why not? LucidTalk findings have repeatedly been cited to justify a border poll, and even when polls such as by Lord Ashcroft have been cited on that, the News Letter has been unable to get an answer as to whether the fieldwork was in fact carried out by Lucidtalk.

It is troubling that there is not a wider pool of pollsters carrying out key research into voting intentions in NI.

Putting aside concerns about the seemingly limited field of polling companies carrying out important surveys, the findings of this latest LucidTalk poll for a rival newspaper are interesting.

In a way they confirm something that was already suspected: the unionism is badly fractured.

The results make particularly bad reading for the DUP. But as that party’s leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson says, opinion polls come and go but it is the assembly election that counts.

But even if the findings are in fact a poor indicator of what will happen next year, it is telling that so many unionists — for now at least – are disinclined to change their voting intention just because Sinn Fein might become the largest party.

On the one hand there are unionists who simply want a completely new liberal image for unionism. On the other, there are those who realise that the protocol is so disastrous it must be the over-riding issue in deciding their vote, and that Jim Allister is by far the most uncompromising on it.

Another regrettable aspect of the three-way unionist split is that a SF first minister would not be a likely prospect if not for the change at St Andrew’s in how the first minister relates to largest party.

If related to community designation unionism would still be top. LucidTalk has combined unionism 5% above nationalism.

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