On the hustings: It's a cold, dark November evening in north Belfast. Coronation Street is on TV. There's a premiership match on Sky Sports. But there's an election campaign to fight and Sinn Féin's canvassers are dutifully pounding the pavements, writes Carl O'Brien
Gerry Kelly MP and his running mate, Kathy Stanton, are calling at rows of terraced redbrick houses around Atlantic Avenue. But the houses aren't chosen at random. Instead, they are carefully selected from a database detailing the likely voting habits of each household. Working from a detailed register built up since the early 1980s, the director of elections for the area, John Meredith, a young enthusiastic volunteer, holds a clipboard with page after page of tables, figures and addresses.
The houses are broken down into "greens", or Sinn Féin voters, "yellows", typically undecided or those likely to transfer a vote, and "whites", typically unionist voters who do not vote Sinn Féin.
Tonight's focus is on first-time voters. There is a print-out of names and addresses of people who have turned 18. Parties sometimes tend to ignore young voters, who they feel are less likely to vote. Sinn Féin, however, recognises the value in winning them over, many having only vague memories of pre-ceasefire days.
At one terraced house a middle-aged woman opens the door to greet the candidates. After pleasantries are exchanged, they ask to see her daughter, who recently turned 18. When they find out she isn't in, they ask that she pass on the word that they're looking for her vote. They will be back during their next canvass.
And that's the way Sinn Féin operates. Whereas many parties jolt into campaigning mode when elections come around, Sinn Féin has taken the art of canvassing to a new level by selectively canvassing and knocking on doors over the past 18 months. As the political climate changes, the party has managed to steadily increase its vote across the North. Officials say it has jumped by an impressive 20 per cent in some areas of Belfast in just five years. These growth areas are the "yellows", mostly SDLP supporters, whom they are concentrating on ahead of the election.
While for Sinn Féin North Belfast is blighted by many loyalist and republican "interface" areas, easily spotted with the abundance of police cameras, peace walls and boarded-up houses, it also includes more middle-class areas like the Castle district. Party officials are particularly targeting this area.
But for all the slickness of its electoral machine, Sinn Féin has a problem: that of winning sufficient transfers.While many of its unelected candidates have an impressive first-preference vote, they are often overtaken by rivals benefiting from a greater flow of transfer votes. Mr Kelly acknowledges this is a problem. "We did very badly on transfers in '98 ... We're asking for first preferences, but whatever your preference is, we're asking that they vote for us further down the line."
