Northern Ireland Assembly Election, 2022

[Epaminondas]

Giving veto power to a sectarian single-issue party with a rigid electorate is a disaster, who'd have guessed.
Westminster needs to rescind the right to collapse Stormont by any one party, whichever side it is from.

We may have to wait for the next Labour gov for that to happen.

The last Assembly elections were 6 months ago, and we're 4 weeks into injury time without a government.

Least promising of all is that the DUP is still sitting pretty at 27% voting intentions (+6), having clawed back some of the TUV support surge back in May.

A swing of 50% of the TUV electorate would mean the DUP are only really at risk in 2 seats, both to the UUP, in Foyle and East Antrim, and they could conceivably recover a seat in North Antrim and Belfast West.

Meanwhile, SF only really have a shot at growing their majority in Upper Bann and East Derry, neither very promising.

So it looks likely we'll be seeing a 28-26-18 Assembly next January, with still no end to the gridlock in sight.

[Epaminondas]

Assembly members probably aren't hurting for money, but a collective punishement for the intransigence of the DUP reflects questionable priorities from Westminster.

The next elections cannot come soon enough. Perhaps a twin SF/Labour landslide on both sides of the Irish sea in 2023. Wish it were SDLP/Lab but know better than to hope for that.

[Epaminondas]

Is a SF landslide even possible in NI? Or are we talking relatively speaking?

SF does not even court unionist voters which locks them out of 6 constituencies, so there will never be a true SF landslide like there could be in the Free state.
If they sweep the swayable republicans, the 35% would probably garner 30 Assembly seats, their ceiling for the time being.

It's a testament to the idiosyncracies of SF's platform that they have self-locked out of political domination, while the DUP is never far from becoming the main player again.

[Epaminondas]

Stormont legislators don't appear to be seizing the opportunity to run both the UK local elections (18 May) and NI Assembly elections (unset, around April) on the same ballot.

The US strategy of encouraging simultaneous elections seems more reasonable to me, as a cost-cutting and turnout-boosting measure.

[Epaminondas]

Pushed back to April of 2024 now, the very definition of kicking into the long grass.