Forecasting the 2017 Assembly Election

The snap Assembly election called for the 2nd of March 2017 will be the first to return 5 MLAs from each constituency, reducing the total number of MLAs from 108 to 90. This, combined with indications of a fall in support for the DUP and a rise in support for the Green Party and People Before Profit, makes this year’s election less predictable than is usually the case for Northern Ireland elections. I have built a forecast model in an attempt to predict who will be returned to the next Assembly.

“Sinn Fein’s northern operation risks becoming an…

Not least because he lays out some of the key assumptions of Sinn Fein’s plan to re-unite the island, some of which, like “cross-border bodies confirm the legitimacy of the border” demonstrate the party’s enduring disdain for a pragmatic to the matter. The party hopes that Stormont’s future style and content of governance will reflect an economically unified, post-Brexit Ireland.