NI Assembly Elections - A rerun of the GFA referendum?

I doubt it, think of all the 'Catholics' is nice cushy well paid public service jobs, bankrolled by the UK. Buying the peace it was called. And their families.

Do you honestly see turkeys voting for Christmas?

There are many middle class ordinary families of NI doing right nicely thank you very much.

It would be an all Ireland poll and while the Northern part would be close to call the Republic one would probably be in the 80% or so for a UI, this would be hard to stomach for FFG or the Greens .

A good majority of Alliance votes transfer to pro-UI parties/MLAs - that cannot be ignored. The so-called 'middle ground' is not in the Irish Sea, it's in Ireland where the Irish people live. If forced to choose between aligning with Ireland in the EU, or a UK led by Eton arseholes adrift from Europe, I reckon 90% of Alliance voters will choose the former.

The next census will be another huge psychological shock for Unionism. Young people from a PUL background are not stupid and will know that it is in their interests to build goodwill with their nationalist neighbours and keep the differences between north and south to a minimum as they'll understand the border is never coming back and the orange statelet is dead.

I think that would be true where and when it comes down to that, but my reckoning was 37 to 36 in favour of Unionism, anyway, making 73, plus the 17 seats for the AP. The two independent candidates who were elected are both Unionist, as I understand it.

Do you want to bring unionists as a group with you? Or do you just wanna tell them to fcuk off back across the Irish Sea?

Knowing you, I think the former. And that will take patience and making things work together. Who above said that you need a United Northern Ireland first!!

I’m not sure how anyone could think having any of those bozzos anywhere near your voters could help. No wonder they lost 4 seats.

Also that Dodds or Dolores truck poster was utterly ridiculous- that kind of over personalised negative campaigning wouldn’t really impress the kind of moderate voters that vote SDLP go for. Say what you like about Dodds- she was an MEP, has a big vote base and name recognition. I wouldn’t vote for her but she isn’t the worst out of the DUP by any means. Totally missed the point

It was all over Twitter, MM, Neale Richmond and Ivana Bacik all campaigning for SDLP. The same parties campaigned for Brid Rogers(SDLP) against SF years ago and got the same result

I just seen BBC news and apparently only 30 to 40% of people in Northern Ireland want a united Ireland, that has to be false, they done a poll 2 years ago and it was 51% for unity and 49% to stay as part of the uk

"We stopped 100 random people on the street who were too gormless to just breeze past us and asked their opinion on something they rarely think about."

Those types of poll wouldn't necessarily be the most scientific way gauging anything, as methodology could vary wildly, but the sense I'm getting is that there isn't anything close to a majority support for a UI within NI right now. I don't know what the future might bring or how some unforeseen event may dramatically affect the calculus, but as I write this, I don't see it from the noises I'm hearing from the North. I do think that the constitutional status of NI will one day change, but when and to what, I'm not sure. Maybe non-sectarian politics will carry on growing in the North and the region one day decides that it's better off as an independent state.

But if the name of the game is ultimately persuading even a small portion of the PUL population to vote for a UI. I'm struggling to see what can be done, in practical terms. I mean the Republic is already as secular as any other country, pretty much, and it doesn't seem to have impressed many of them. Okay Alliance voting types are not anti-Catholic bigots and are not hostile to the Republic, but to me it's still a massive leap from there to actually voting to leave the UK and join the Republic.

Maybe to win a border poll you'll just have fall back on 'Catholics outbreeding Protestants'...I wonder are SF hoping the next Pope is an ultra-conservative who reissues Humanae Vitae...