Interesting times ahead in the North as elections approach

A WEEK is a long time in politics. A week is twice as long in Northern Ireland politics. The next few weeks will be particularly interesting.

Whatever else happens, it appears that the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, which are now due to be held at the end of May, will go ahead.

So while the party leaders were absorbed in frantic negotiations to clarify whether "the war is over" the backroom teams of the various parties were busy putting the final touches to their postering and publicity campaigns for the electoral battle ahead.

I have been a fan of elections since my teens, but there was always something about elections in Northern Ireland which was off-putting. Like much of Northern Ireland politics, elections there seemed full of a particular bitterness and in many ways they were sideshows since the religious- political rivalries more often erupted on the streets or in brutal campaigns of violence. However, the electoral aspect of Northern Ireland politics is now more to the fore, and understanding Northern Ireland's elections can help us in the Republic to understand Northern politicians and the different pressures they are under.

In my spare time in recent weeks, I've been finalising research, with the Queens University academic Nicholas Whyte, on a tallyman's guide, which we are due to publish in advance of the Assembly elections. One thing seems certain from any examination of the trends in Northern Ireland elections, for the foreseeable future, no policy issue or debate can hope to displace the religious-political divide as the defining factor of voter behaviour.

First preference votes, second preference votes and last preference votes in Northern Ireland nearly always follow predictable patterns along unionist or nationalist lines. There are no reasons to believe it will be different in the Assembly elections due next month.

However, in a more intense way than ever, these Assembly elections will also be about the struggle for leadership within nationalism and within unionism. This struggle is more than a virtual contest. It is likely that the prize of the post of First Minster will be available to whichever party emerges as the strongest in unionism (if they want to take up the position). Similarly, it is likely that the Deputy First Minster position will be available to whichever nationalist party returns to the next Assembly with the largest number of members.

The battle within nationalism will be intense. In June 2001, elections were held in Northern Ireland to elect MPs to Westminster. On the same day, local elections were held to fill seats on Northern Ireland's district councils. In both of these elections, Sinn Féin outpolled the SDLP and made dramatic seat gains. All the indications are that they are likely to do so again.

The SDLP's task of holding its ground against the Sinn Féin surge is not made easier by the fact that it will be fighting this election without many of its senior members, some of whom were among its best vote-getters.

John Hume's absence endangers one of the party's seats in Foyle. Seamus Mallon's absence means the party will have to struggle harder to hold its second seats in Newry and Armagh. The retirement of Eddie McGrady and Bríd Rogers will also have an impact. While the passing of the torch to a new generation of leadership is in the long-term interest of the SDLP, and in fact is probably long overdue, it will give rise in these Assembly elections to electoral weaknesses. Whether these will be temporary, remains to be seen. The party's new leader, Mark Durkan, can justifiably point to a substantial personal and party contribution to the peace process and to framing the Good Friday Agreement. However, it is the party's performance in this, his first electoral contest as leader, which will determine the party's development.

On the basis of the 2001 local elections, Sinn Féin is well positioned to make seat gains in perhaps six of the 18 constituencies in these Assembly elections. Of course, not all of these new seats will be taken directly from the SDLP, but seat gains on this scale would make Sinn Féin the largest party on the nationalist side of the incoming Assembly. This scenario is not appealing to the political parties here in the Republic, all of whom have long had an affinity for the SDLP and some of whom have reason to fear Sinn Féin's electoral advance.

Northern Ireland elections are notoriously hard to predict and of course the election campaign itself and recent happenings in the peace process will have an impact. But, on the balance of probabilities, Sinn Féin will have enough Assembly seats in the incoming Assembly to claim the Deputy First Minster position.

The battle within unionism will also be intense. The Democratic Unionist Party is on the up. In the 2001 Westminster elections the party increased its number of MPs in the House of Commons from two to five. In the local elections held for the North's district councils on the same day the party increased its vote by almost six percentage points on the last locals.

By comparison, the Ulster Unionist vote has been falling. The party has not been helped by almost constant challenges to David Trimble. Divisions about the party's attitude to working the Good Friday Agreement and to being in the Executive with Sinn Féin have already cost the party the loss of two seats in the outgoing Assembly through defections and expulsions.

These divisions on the Agreement have also caused serious tensions in the selection of candidates for May's Assembly elections. In some constituencies the party's ticket is divided between pro-Agreement and anti-Agreement candidates. In other constituencies sitting MLAs, who were pro-Agreement, were not selected by their local party organisations to contest May's elections and a couple of these are threatening to run against the party as independents.

After the 1998 election, the Ulster Unionist Party won 28 seats in the Assembly while the Democratic Unionist Party won 20. Since then, the UUP has had two defections, but the DUP has gained three seats, one of these through a defection from the Ulster Unionist Party and two through defections from the smaller unionist parties. The DUP is set to make about five seat gains in this election. However, most of these are likely to be at the expense of the smaller unionist parties and former independents rather than Trimble's party.

Therefore, the DUP's emergence as the largest unionist party is not a foregone conclusion. It is all still to play for. It is not impossible that the two largest unionist parties could return after the elections with the same number of seats each. However, even if Trimble returns to the new Assembly as leader of the largest unionist party, there is a considerable risk that some of his own anti-Agreement MLAs would not support his re-election to the First Minister position.

Although the struggle both between and within unionism and nationalism will dominate the election, in the middle the Alliance Party and the Women's Coalition will fight the good fight to hold the centre against increasingly polarised politics. Both of the Women's Coalition seats are in jeopardy, although they will probably retain one. The Alliance's vote share has also being declining in the years since the Good Friday Agreement.

All of this means there will be interesting, if unstable, times ahead in Northern Ireland politics much has changed but much also stays the same.