Sam McBride: Surge for Sinn Fein uncannily matches return of Stormont

There is one clear answer to that, based on exit poll and other data which shows that housing and health were the main reasons why voters chose Sinn Fein.

But that answer is at best incomplete because both those areas have been in crisis for years – yet Sinn Fein’s support has been consistently poor, both in opinion polls and elections, for the last two years.

Yesterday some commentators suggested that the resolution – of sorts – to Brexit because of Boris Johnson’s thumping win in the British general election on December 12 had convinced voters that it was no longer an electoral issue.

Yet between December 17 and January 14, Sinn Fein fell one percentage point in comparable polls for The Sunday Times. The first indication of the party’s swelling support was in a January 18 Irish Times poll showing a seven-point increase in support since October.

Five days later a Sunday Business Post poll showed an eight-point surge in support over a two-month period. Two days later, an Irish Daily Mail poll put Sinn Fein support up five percentage points from a month earlier.

There is an uncanny correlation between the time at which those polls showed a surge in support and the restoration of Stormont on January 11 – although that may be entirely coincidental.

Having initially risen in the polls after walking out of Stormont but then having been down in the polls and in elections – with the exception of by-elections – for much of the time when Stormont was down, it is remarkable that Sinn Fein’s surge has coincided so precisely with devolution’s return.

There is limited reason to believe that voters desperate to be able to afford a house or see a doctor were influenced by what to many of them must seem like esoteric questions about the north which have far less bearing on their lives.

Other issues such as the RIC commemoration controversy flared just before Stormont’s return, contributing to some voters’ weariness at the old parties.

It may be that the impact of the return of devolution was limited to blunting other parties’ attacks and giving Sinn Fein some free publicity.

But the scale and suddenness of the party’s surge is such that it prompts a search for answers in what would otherwise be unlikely places.