Gavan Reilly: Dublin would do well to heed verdict of NI’s voters

Transposing results from one set to another is never a perfect science, and even difficult when comparing local elections. Most voters are simply not as engaged as they could be, or ought to be, so the cohort of voters that actually shows up is always lower, and varies from time to time. It’s clear from the seats and votes won by the major parties in the North’s election elections that a significant number of voters simply stayed at home.

Sinn Féin’s overall success is, however, not something that can be qualified by any regression analysis. As is now usual, it won a huge chunk of voters from the SDLP - the latter party losing around 16,500 first preference votes - but it also appears to have encouraged normally stay-at-home nationalists to show up at the ballot box too, as its own first preference vote jumped by over 73,000. It is pretty plain, therefore, that Sinn Féin’s message is landing on a fertile and receptive audience. Whether that’s intended to be a mere slap in the face to the DUP for staying out of Stormont, or if it’s an endorsement of a broader programme, is something to be analysed another time.

What’s worth noting, though, is the idea that Sinn Féin support has not yet reached any apparent ceiling. One major mantra over the weekend is that Sinn Féin has taken the SDLP’s chunk of the nationalist pie but not made the pie any bigger. An analysis of both seats and votes shows that to be untrue. So how many more nationalist voters can Sinn Féin eke out? Where are those votes coming from, and could they repeat the same trick down south?

On the Unionist side – despite that wing of politics losing an enormous number of seats – there was still an increase in the raw number of voters. The number of votes shed by the Ulster Unionists is almost exactly the number gained by the more hardline TUV. Yet the DUP also increased its vote by the guts of 10,000. So there’s more than just a shifting of votes amongst parties: there’s a growth in the unionist electorate, just not at the same rate as nationalists.

Is winning more first preference votes an endorsement of the DUP’s policy so far? And is that policy one of staying out, pending some speculative further changes in a document that nobody is prepared to renegotiate? Or is it now an instruction to go back into power, having extracted the maximum concessions?

Nationalism’s marginal win over unionism (in both votes and council seats) is far from an instruction to hold a border poll but it is at least totemic. Sinn Féin are the biggest party at both central and local government in Northern Ireland, and at central level in the Republic. By next June they could complete the quadruple.

What then, the next time that there’s a spat over Stormont? Usually the First Minister-designate would come to Dublin and bid for the input of an otherwise laissez-faire Taoiseach. A Mary Lou McDonald/Michelle O’Neill double act will be much more collaborative than that. Would it be any harm to start thinking about a united Ireland might bring about, before Sinn Féin set off their runaway train?