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Frank Connolly is a journalist, author and former head of communications with SIPTU. Tony Lowes is director of Friends of the Irish Environment. Michael Smith is the editor of Village Magazine.
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Lucid Talk is the Belfast-based polling company which, every year, does a poll on attitudes in the north to a border poll. Polls are, of course, only polls, but these are useful, because year after year, they do the same poll, with the same questions, the same methodology, so even if you quibble about the results, you can’t argue with the direction of change over time.
In their 2024 poll, unionism had a 10 point lead over nationalism – 49 to 39 per cent. The same poll this year cut that margin to seven per cent. This, of course, isn’t a normal poll, just like anything in Northern Ireland is a normal anything. This is not measuring opinion going back and forth in cycles, this is mostly just reflecting demographic changes. In 2025, that lead is down to seven per cent, 48 to 41 per cent.
At a three-percent-per-year shift, that would point to a nationalist majority before Catherine Connolly is half-way through her first term as president. And that’s not even the real demographic nightmare for unionists. The real disaster is that their support is concentrated in the older demographics. Unionism is, literally, dying.
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