A quick graph on Northern Ireland voting patterns

[andrewducker]

Lots of noise about "Look at Sinn Fein! The Republicans are coming!"

So I grabbed the numbers from Wikipedia all the way back to the first NI Assembly vote in 1998, and it's quite clear that the numbers for Republicanism in general have hardly nudged in the last 25 years. SF+SDLP goes back and forth over the 40% line by a point or two.

The real story is that Unionists are slowly moving to Alliance. It's taking a generation or three, and past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, but if you look at where the figures have gone, that's why SF has moved into first place - not because Republicanism has taken mindshare, but because enough people have decided that Unionism isnt for them.



You'll have to excuse the fairly constant 6-7% of "Unknown" at the bottom. I wasn't going to go through every tiny party from the last 25 years and work out whether their 0.7% of the vote was Republican, Unionist, or Other.

For the record - Republican is SF and SDLP, Unionist is DUP,UUP, PUP, and TUV, and Other is Alliance, Green, and People Before Profit (who I'm fairly sure are Other, but am happy to be told otherwise, although it won't make much difference to the graph shape.

Comments

[doug]

Awesome, thanks for making that.

Did you deliberately invert the green/orange republican/unionist colours for lolz?

[andrewducker]

Nope, just kept awake by a sick baby for half the night and have no brain.

[doug]

That's much more understandable! Hope the baby's better and you've had some rest, or if not, that happens soon. It's tough stuff parenting little ones IME. (Older ones have their own, different challenges but at least I'm not fighting sleep deprivation brain fog while trying to deal with difficult things.)

[andrewducker]

Gideon decided to throw up *into Jane's mouth* in the middle of that night, and so she's now also feeling pretty under the weather. Fingers crossed we all live through the next few days!

[doug]

Oh my goodness! Fingers definitely crossed for you all.

[symbioid]

Are the Other parties for an Independent N. Ireland?

[andrewducker]

Nobody is for that, as far as I can tell.

[symbioid]

Yeah I don't think i've ever heard that, maybe I misunderstood.

When "Other" is in this category, then what is the stance towards Union or Republic? Is there no official party stance - and thus it's left to the politician's conscience?

I'm a bit confused how the categories work, I guess. Thanks for any insight :)

[andrewducker]

They concentrate on running the country rather than lobbying for constitutional things.

[symbioid]

Thanks - that makes sense...

[mountainkiss]

You are Dan and I claim my £5.

How does this compare with dynamics in Scotland? I find it quite plausible that independence support has remained consistent and union support has gone down. I recognise that the structure of parties is different.

[andrewducker]

I'll have a look at it tomorrow! But that's my impression.

Of course it's tricky to tell directly, because the turnout for council elections isn't the same as people who turned out for the referendum.

[mountainkiss]

Yes and there is no Alliance equivalent which I’d have thought would be a big confounder. But it might be testable in other ways.

[calimac]

Isn't the Alliance in N.I. pretty much the equivalent - I think they may even be sister parties - of the British mainland Liberal Democrats? Which used to be called ... the Alliance?

[andrewducker]

They are really really not neutral on Scottish Independence.

[mountainkiss]

I am not 100% certain - hoping Patrick will show up and correct me if I’m wrong - but I think the Lib Dems in Scotland are an explicitly unionist party.

[danieldwilliam]

They are. When I hung out with more LD's they were in favour of significant devolution of powers across the whole of the UK. To the point where, with both Scotland and England inside the EU there was not much practical difference between the SNP's independence in Europe position and the LD's devo-max to the max position.

I'm not sure where the LD's are on decentralisation and devolution at the moment.

[andrewducker]

My experience is "We want federal. And we won't accept anything else."

And I don't believe we're going to get it, so I'm going elsewhere.

[danieldwilliam]

I've thought for a while that by the time the English realise their constitution is broken and they need to change other parts of the Union will have had enough of waiting for them and left.

[andrewducker]

I gave up in May 2011, as you know :-)

[danieldwilliam]

I think none of the main 5 parties in Scotland is neutral on the constitution or (honestly) believes it isn't an issue which ought to have priority.

[danieldwilliam]

In 1992 the SNP won 3 Westminster seats on 21.5% of the vote. Their best performance was to win all but 3 seats on 50% of the vote in 2015.

What I think hinders the Unionist parties in Scotland often is the 3 way split of their vote, use of the d'Hondt system and the larger proportion of FPTP seats in Scotland's Additional Member system. You can get some particularly sub-optimal outcomes with not huge movements in vote distribution.

[danieldwilliam]

Also, raging inflation; it's £5.50 now.

[andrewducker]

Having even a cursory look at the council elections makes it clear that they will tell us nothing about Independence. For a start, all of the polls were putting SNP support at 40-45%, and they actually got 32%. Because councils have no effect on Independence, and frankly it doesn't matter that much if your council is run by Labour, Lib-Dems, or SNP, you're going to get broadly the same result.

Scottish Parliament wise, in 2021 Green+SNP got got 48.4%, compared to 48.7% in 2016. With a few percent going from SNP->Green. Going back to 2011 it was 48.4%. So not any real difference, and all that's happened in the last 10 years is that the SNP have gone from 44% to 40% and the Greens have gone from 4% to 8%.

(All on the regional vote, which seems most likely to be people's true national preference).

And 48% does seem to be where Scotland's support for Independence is hovering. I occasionally wonder just how bad Westminster would have to get for it to go higher.

[mountainkiss]

I think it might be stuck until and unless there’s an actual campaign, in which case a lot of views will crystallise. But could be wrong.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it very-much depends on what the SNP can throw at the Conservatives that they haven't already thrown! I'm not convinced that most people haven't already made their minds up, but we shall see.

[mountainkiss]

I think it’s a long time since anyone did active envisioning of an independent Scotland. It’s not politically wise right now - the FM has sensibly concentrated on exigent issues and building a broader party brand. But an independence campaign would introduce new dialogue, I think.

[danieldwilliam]

It might do, but I think the odds are probably that it wouldn't if the referendum were held soon.

There was a big shift in opinions during the last referendum campaign. Polls at the beginning of the campaign had Yes on about 30% - final vote was 45%. And the split is currently running at about 50:50 with No having a small but persistent advantage.

However, I'm not sure that a referendum campaign now would shift opinions that much. I think most people were required to form a firm opinion in 2014 and the question has been pretty live in the public discourse so people have mostly stuck with the decision they made in 2014. I'm not sure that there been time or opportunity for those opinions to have become plastic enough for a campaign to make that much difference.

Even the fact of an English Brexit hasn't firmly shifted opinion much away from the current approximately 50:50 split.

If a referendum campaign were launched in favourable conditions to Yes (rubbish Tory government mired in corruption and incompetence and the impact of Brexit becoming more apparent) the campaign might start from 50:50 and then make enough difference to produce a clear but narrow win for Yes.

There is a good chance that an independence campaign built around a social democratic liberal society with membership of the EU could build a coalition that attracted more than 60% of voters. My gut feel is that it probably wouldn't in the 2020's but probably would in the 2030's. I would be delighted to be wrong.

There's an interesting strategic bind for the pro-independence camp, in that in order to form that social democratic pro-EU coalition they require the Labour Party to be unlikely to win a UK general election whilst at the same time the Tories are rubbish or competently doing things that are anathema in Scotland. Those things strike me as being at the same end of an electoral see-saw unless the political cultures of England and Scotland diverge more and more. The worse the Tories are the more likely it is that Labour win an electio

[mountainkiss]

There's no possibility of a referendum whilst we have a rubbish Tory government etc. etc. - they won't consent to it. I think the only realistic pathway is a GE with no overall majority, at which point the FM will be able to demand a referendum as the price of a coalition. (I think this is probably the most likely outcome, though far from certainty.)

[danieldwilliam]

It is still not settled law that the Westminster government has to consent to a referendum. It is probably the case that they do but until it's tested in court it is uncertain.

[mountainkiss]

I am sure this is true, but I don’t think there is any possibility of success on any other terms and I think the FM also thinks this.

[danieldwilliam]

There is room in here for a deliberate failure.

The current SNP leadership is under some pressure to actually have the referendum they keep putting in their manifesto. There is also a limit to the amount of time a party can be in government before they run out of steam and I think the SNP are probably approaching that point.

Trying to have one and then failing to be allowed one is perhaps the next best thing.

A lot of that rests on the likely long-term prospects for Alba. Which probably look a little weaker than I expected them to be right now.

[mountainkiss]

I do not think Alba have long-term prospects because I think it's inextricably linked with Salmond and I think his brand is tarnished beyond repair one way or another. But could be wrong.

[danieldwilliam]

I think that is probably true and more true now that attitudes to Russian state influence in domestic politics are hardening.

The other variable is how solid Sturgeon's position within the SNP is outwith her delivery of the several-times-promised-not-yet-delivered referendum is. If the factions in the Yes movement who want a referendum soon can't get rid of her within the SNP for any price, then Alba exists as a vehicles for them to go to. Perhaps an unattractive and electorally restricted vehicle but there is some value in being able tocredibly threaten to destroy a thing.

[mountainkiss]

Yes, I see this. She appears to have a strangle lock but I don't know anything about what's going on behind the scenes and how rational it is.

[danieldwilliam]

I have no idea what conversations the senior leadership of the SNP have had and what decisions they have made. I think options on the menu include

1) We won't win in the 2020's we should delay until the 2030's.

2) We should wait until the polls are more in our favour.

3) Beige social democracy until people are not terrified and morale improves.

4) Wait until there is a hung parliament. Issue our demands then.

5) Wait until we can play Parnell and the Irish Home Rule party i.e. merry hell in Westminster FOR EVER.

6) What we want from the next constitutional change is a) fiscal autonomy b) the right to control when and how the independence question is settled as a pre-cursor to an actual referendum in our own time.

7) What we actually want is Devo-Max but we can't say that.

8) When COVID is actually over, we're going to actually try and hold a referendum.

9) The more Boris the Better in the short term. Confront people with the unacceptable face of Toryism in the 21st century.

10) Actually, all my attention is on mitigating Boris and co and I don't have time for much else.

[andrewducker]

I'm team "2". But accept that they have to make a move sooner than that to keep their base on board.

I do not expect them to win a referendum in the near future, although I'd give them a ⅒ chance of doing so.

If we got full fiscal autonomy that would be nice. But I'd see that as a stepping stone to full independence.

The only thing I can think of that would stop me voting for Independence would be electoral reform at Westminster.

[calimac]

Apparently there is an official "Other" designation for parties at Stormont, it means just what you use it to mean, and People Before Profit has it. According to its wikipedia page.

[andrewducker]

I failed to spot that earlier. Thank you for doing so!

[danieldwilliam]

As part of the ministerial allocation process you have to pick a community to be a member of or declare yourself other.

[coth]

Very interesting. Will you get the chance to discuss this with Nicholas Whyte?

[andrewducker]

In the olden days this would have crossposted to Livejournal and he'd have seen it there.

Nowadays it doesn't and he's not anymore! I'll point him this way and see if he has an opinion.

[danieldwilliam]

Did you get a sense of how much the relative fragmentation of the Unionist vote in NI impacted the number of seats they won overall?

[andrewducker]

Discussion from Nicholas Whyte, who knows rather more than I do about this kind of thing:
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/northern-ireland-assembly-final-results-ae22/

[danieldwilliam]

Seems to be a bit of a fragmentation effect but more of an impact of the Traditional Unionist Voice being unpopular as a second and third choice.

[bens_dad]

Not on topic, but if Sinn Fein had taken up their Westminster seats and voted on Brexit I doubt that the Northern Ireland Protocol would be in place. Has anyone taken them up on this ?

[andrewducker]

I imagine that they are happy with the NI protocol in place (which guarantees the free movement), and that they believe that if the walls go back up then that will spur people for unification. And that overall if the UK wants to damage itself that that's none of their concern.

[hairyears]

That blue 'other' line reflects the orange (!) 'Republican' line very well indeed.

So much so that, I'd say that someone in that 'other' is acting as a magnet for people who are somewhat disaffected with either Sinn Fein or the SDLP, and moving out and then back again in a way that suggests that they remain aligned with the broad goals of the Republican movement.

Which is to say: that 'other' component probably consists of Republican supporters, and adding it in to the orange straightens it considerably...

And that, in turn, makes this all about the Unionists' loss of support to the Alliance Party.