Things we can take from the other Irish Election

With all the ballots counted, preferences transfered and seats awarded, the make up of the could-be Stormont Assembly is now known. It was an election of little surprise - the DUP and Sinn Fein grew, the UUP and SDLP shrunk and no major names suffered shock defeats (akin to Trimble in the 2005 Westminster elections).

So what, if anything can be taken from the Northern Ireland election results and applied to our upcoming race?

Another shade of Green:

Sinn Fein, much to the disgust of Fianna Fail, like to regularly remind us of its All Ireland credentials. It was, as its publications once proudly proclaimed, the only party to seek to represent the people of the entire island.

Since 2005, that’s no longer true, however, with the Green Party of Northern Ireland voting to become a regional wing of the Green Party we in the republic all know of.

This week’s NI election was a pretty good one for the Greens who are now the proud owners of a seat in the heavily Unionist North Down constituency.

But while one seat out of 108 isn’t overly impressive, the growth of their vote is. In 2003 they tallied 2,688 votes (roughly .4% of the total ballots cast). This time around they grabbed 11,985 votes, quadrupling their total vote percentage to 1.7%.

Naturally, this is good news for Trevor Sargent and his cohorts. We all know the party is anticipating significant gains due to strong polling as of late, but this spurt should serve to accent the increasing prominence of green issues in the minds of the electorate. There is no doubt that the Greens would certainly appreciate even a portion of the vote growth their Northern wing has enjoyed.

Electoral tunnel vision:

Here’s an interesting point - taking all the overtly nationalist and unionist parties as two respective groupings (DUP/UUP/PUP/UKUP being one and SF/SDLP being the other), nationalists were up two seats while unionists were down four. That means that two seats transfered from one “side” of the community to the other during the election, but it also means another two slipped out of the historical divide that has always dominated NI politics.

Naturally, this is a small but significant victory for cross-community politics and a small chipping away at the dominance of tribal politics.

What’s even more significant, however, is that while all eyes rested on the DUP and SF in anticipation of their gains (and the UUP and SDLP in anticipation of their collapse), no one seemed to notice the growth of the minor parties.

In fact, so unnoticed were the likes of the Alliance Party that one of their MLAs felt obliged to scold the BBC on air during their election coverage for bumping them into the ‘Other’ category on their on-screen display (at the time the Alliance accounted for 5 of the 6 seats in the Other category).

Here, with less tribalism to contend with, the scope of parties given attention by the media is almost all-inclusive, however there are some small omissions.

The Independents are extremely hard to quantify or qualify on anything other than a local level, and given their independent nature (who would have imagined it?), they rarely get much attention or, dare I say it, respect.

The other, more traceable, dark horse of Irish politics is the Socialist Party, however. Joe Higgins is easily one of the more entertaining characters in the Dáil today and his often superb oration seems to make him as much of a publicly liked character as Bertie himself (but one without nearly as much reach).

As was said during RTÉ’s coverage of Leader’s Questions this week, Higgins seems to care little about the public’s pet issues of the day and this freedom has made him and his party a leading voice in any kind of public dissent, be it in relation to the Corrib gas pipe or US military use of Shannon airport. With Labour’s ever-so-slight move to the right (and away from socialism), there could perhaps be a somewhat wider niche for the Socialists to now take advantage of.

With no polls paying them any heed, however, it’s hard to say how the Socialists are actually doing but it might be worth paying some attention to them in light of Northern Ireland’s semi-surprise results for the Greens and Alliance (who, it should be said, increased their vote by around 10,000).

The Sinn Fein element:

Sinn Fein might deny it, but most of their Northern Ireland voters pick the party for very different reasons than their southern peers - that’s why they’re the second biggest party in NI and the second smallest party in RoI.

With that in mind it’s pointless to suggest that a SF surge up there will result in a SF surge down here, but that’s not to say it won’t have some impact in May.

Firstly, there’s the “well done” factor which the party benefited from greatly in 2002. They will be rewarded for IRA decommissioning and support for the PSNI, although probably to a smaller extent than they were for the Good Friday Agreement.

(In January, The Sunday Business Post and RedC asked poll respondents if Sinn Fein support for the PSNI would make them more inclined to give them a vote, to which many said ‘yes’.)

If they make the deal with the DUP and are actually in government by the time we go to the polls, that’s another story altogether.

As one learned blogger pointed out at the IBAs, many who don’t vote Sinn Fein see them as a party of crooks, bank robbers, terrorists, con artists or whatever else. While they’ve done plenty to move themselves away from that image these non-SFers are, like Paisley, still a little skeptical.

If the deal is done soon, however, and positions are dished out and taken, we in Ireland will get a glimpse of Sinn Fein as statesmen and that perception will be diluted somewhat.  Of course we won’t see enough of them to decide if they’re actually capable of the job at hand, but that may be to their benefit more than detriment.

It’s odd, I suppose. Paisley is far from the most liked person in Ireland, and he is the mortal enemy of Sinn Fein supporters. Despite this, he is probably the key to electoral success for Sinn Fein down here and those non-SF voters who have no time for the “doctor” either may well be waiting for the nod from him before they back Adams and Co. After all, if Paisley can agree to work with Sinn Fein, maybe they’re not so bad after all.