Newton Emerson: Rumours of DUP’s demise greatly exaggerated

Jeffrey Donaldson’s party has recovered in the polls – and most unusually in Northern Ireland it is possible to refer to polls in the plural. Two separate surveys came out last week, from LucidTalk and Social Market Research (SMR), with their results in general agreement.

They show Sinn Féin stagnant at about 24 per cent, the DUP about five points behind in second place, Alliance a close third at about 18 per cent and the UUP and SDLP fourth and fifth, both in their long-term 12-14 per cent range.

LucidTalk provides the only frequent and regular polling in Northern Ireland and its quarterly tracking surveys have defined an extraordinary year.

Starting in February, they found the DUP slipping behind Sinn Féin by losing support in two opposite directions, to Alliance and the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice.

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The Beattie bounce is over, the Alliance surge is back and even Sinn Féin's remaining lead is not what it appears

This bombshell led directly to the DUP dropping its support for the Brexit protocol and pushing out its leader, Arlene Foster. It also drove a change at the top of the UUP, with Steve Aiken replaced by Doug Beattie, who was thought to be more capable of appealing to a broad centre ground.

The next poll, in May, showed a ‘Beattie bounce’ and continued DUP decline, undermining new leader Edwin Poots, who was gone within a month.

September saw the DUP on a mere 13 per cent. Alliance had the same figure, reversing its ‘surge’ since 2019. Donaldson, in his post for two months when the poll was taken, led the third-largest unionist party, behind the UUP and TUV. Sinn Féin had an unassailable lead.

Yet now this new political reality has all vanished like smoke. The Beattie bounce is over, the Alliance surge is back and even Sinn Féin’s remaining lead is not what it appears. Few expect the TUV, effectively a one-man protest party, to translate its support into seats. Much of the 11 per cent it is still polling will go back to the DUP.

Donaldson has a two-pronged strategy to revive his party’s fortunes. First, he intends to lay claim to whatever sea border concessions London can extract from Brussels and inch the DUP back to accepting the protocol.

Statements this week typify this balancing act. Donaldson is demanding article 16 be triggered while also promising a great deal is in the offing. It is as if he is the nice cop and the nasty cop at a Larne customs post.

Polling just a few points behind Sinn Féin is in many ways ideal for the DUP, as it keeps voters motivated to circle the wagons

Last week’s SMR survey showed a large plurality of the unionist population accepts the protocol, with majority acceptance in reach. A deal that satisfies moderates is seen as key. However, if there is a deal, Donaldson will sell it to the entire unionist electorate, as that is the DUP’s only way out of its Brexit mess. So softening the protocol should be highly effective in winning eventual unionist support.

The second prong of Donaldson’s strategy is rallying voters behind him to stop Sinn Féin taking the office of first minister.

This must have been more effective in the DUP’s recovery, as protocol negotiations are still under way.

Unionists are told they are stupid supremacists for valuing the first minister’s office, as the deputy first minister is equal in all but name. On the other hand, unionists are told losing the post heralds a Border poll and a united Ireland. Last week’s surveys both showed nationalist parties hold only a third of the vote and a quarter of the electorate, but it has rarely suited unionist leaders to say the union is safe. Polling just a few points behind Sinn Féin is in many ways ideal for the DUP, as it keeps voters motivated to circle the wagons.

Supremacism is a valid accusation where unionists threaten to collapse Stormont rather than serve with a republican first minister.

The polling trends that took hold this year indicated unionism was radically reinventing itself within its own party system

The TUV makes this threat explicit. The DUP has let it go unspoken rather than be outflanked by the TUV. Beattie has ended up mouthing the same elisions about not campaigning for second place.

LucidTalk has now found only 49 per cent of unionist voters think their party should nominate a deputy to a Sinn Féin first minister, with 41 per cent saying it should not, meaning they would rather devolution collapsed. This is an outrageously undemocratic position for unionism to have talked itself into and may have been instrumental in turning voters back from the UUP to Alliance.

The polling trends that took hold this year indicated unionism was radically reinventing itself within its own party system. The return of the Alliance surge and the DUP and Sinn Féin as the largest parties brings Northern Ireland back to the previous promise of change: a more gradual vision of growth in the unaligned centre, forcing reform to power-sharing and nudging Stormont towards a more ‘normal’ politics. Many will be disappointed. But it is less than a year since this was considered the exciting, imminent future.