You have to admit the Alliance party is anything but secretive. The headlines of this week’s opinion poll may be the percentages for and against certain propositions, but the minutiae of the poll reveal more than most political parties would care to make public.
Some of the findings confirm received ideas about the party, while others are surprising.
First, we know now that Alliance has 1,200 members, and as expected the membership is concentrated in Antrim and Down, but mainly in the greater Belfast area. Not surprising given that’s where the bulk of the Alliance vote comes from.
Secondly, the breakdown confirms party members are very well-heeled indeed and middle-class, with the largest chunk recording annual household income over £70,000. That’s an awful lot by Norn Irn standards.
All of that would have been expected. One of the results that’s unexpected is that, contrary to its public image, Alliance party membership is quite an elderly cohort, with 43% over 65 while only 12% are under 30.
The media image is of growing numbers of new young members and voters.
The big headline of course was the percentage in favour of Irish reunification: 38%, with 55% agreeing there will “probably” be a united Ireland plus 17% agreeing strongly. That’s without any idea of what a reunified country would look like or how it would be governed.
One explanation for the boost in those figures is deep resentment of Brexit which animates Alliance members and, if the figures are anything to go by, Alliance’s increased vote.
Perhaps the best evidence for that is, ironically, in Jeffrey Donaldson’s constituency. In the 2019 Westminster election Donaldson’s share of the vote sank 16% from 2017, while Alliance’s share went up 18%. The Alliance candidate, Sorcha Eastwood, benefited from an anti-Brexit vote. It came directly from a swing against the DUP, with DUP voters protesting against the stupid shenanigans the party had supported in Westminster since 2017.
In Lagan Valley well-educated middle-class professionals deserted the DUP for Alliance. Where else could Eastwood’s votes have come from? All the other candidates’ vote share only varied 2-3%.
In North Down, Alliance’s victory was also an anti-Brexit vote. The DUP vote didn’t plummet like Donaldson’s, but Stephen Farry benefitted from the direct switch of Sylvia Hermon’s anti-Brexit voters to anti-Brexit Alliance.
What we don’t know, and the poll doesn’t tell us, is to what extent Alliance voters who are anti-Brexit and would vote against Brexit again are attracted to support Irish reunification because it guarantees a return to the EU. To what extent does that explain the substantial increase in support in the party for a border poll and the belief that reunification is inevitable?
What it does tell us is that Donaldson’s apparently sudden realisation that there aren’t enough Protestants any more to guarantee the union, and therefore he needs to spread his net wider, is a task that will prove impossible. Impossible because in recent years his behaviour and that of his party, particularly its extremist fringes, has been repugnant.
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Obviously there are no votes coming from Sinn Féin or SDLP. He has failed to make inroads into the UUP. If he’s looking for transfers from Alliance he’s in trouble. At the last assembly election, 54% of Alliance second preferences went to SDLP (33%) and SF (15%) and other united Ireland parties. To the DUP 6%. Pretty stony ground eh?
Donaldson’s apparently sudden realisation that there aren’t enough Protestants any more to guarantee the union, and therefore he needs to spread his net wider, is a task that will prove impossible
After leading his party into a cul de sac, Donaldson now has to write a manifesto for the British general election. What will it say? It is universally accepted by economic think tanks and expert economists that Brexit has lost the UK GDP 4-6% and will continue its damage for the foreseeable future. So that policy failed. Donaldson’s backing of the toughest Brexit in the hope of a hard British border in Ireland has boomeranged spectacularly with his main achievement being a border in the Irish Sea. You’d need a heart of stone not to burst out laughing.
No doubt his manifesto will claim he’s eliminated the Irish Sea border but voters won’t be fooled as the Windsor Framework continues to tighten. Business supports dual access to UK and EU markets and ridicule Donaldson for minimising its benefits.
In short, Donaldson’s policies since 2016 have been demonstrably misguided, when they haven’t been fallacious and misleading as well.