On 23rd May voters will return to the polls just weeks after the local elections saw the Alliance Party surge right across Northern Ireland. With such strong results providing the party with a sense of momentum, many have questioned if their leader Naomi Long can seize Northern Ireland’s third European Parliament seat, currently held by the UUP. Results from the latest LucidTalk poll – the first since the local elections – show just how close this election will be.

According to this poll, excluding non-voters and ‘don’t knows’, only Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson would pass the quota (of 25%) on the first count, taking 27.2% of first preferences. The DUP’s candidate, Diane Dodds, would come second with 20.2%. The SDLP’s Colum Eastwood is polling in third with 13.1% and – incredibly – Danny Kennedy of the UUP and Naomi Long of Alliance would come within 0.5% percent of each other on 11.8% and 11.3% respectively. Since the margin of error of this poll is +/- 2.6 percentage points, the SDLP, UUP and Alliance candidates are in a statistical dead heat.

Perennial candidate and BBC Nolan Show guest, Jim Allister (TUV), would come sixth on 8.5%, with Clare Bailey of the Green Party on 4.6%.

Such a result would indicate that the Alliance surge is more than a one-off phenomenon. Indeed, it would represent a 4.2 percentage point increase in Alliance’s share of the vote. Combined with the vote share of the Green Party, would the two ‘other’ parties would be standing on an impressive 15.9% of the first preference vote – up 7.1 percentage points since 2014.

This result would also confirm the loss of unionism’s majority, with the combined support for unionist parties falling from 50.9% in 2014 to 42.3% in 2019 – down 8.6 points in just five years. This poll indicates that much of this loss in support has been born by the UUP, TUV and UKIP who are down 1.5 points, 3.6 points and 2.2 points respectively since 2014. This, combined with the rise in nationalist support to 40.3%, means that the two nationalist parties would only be 2% shy of the unionist total – a statistically negligible difference.

However, first preferences only tell us part of the story. This is an STV (Single Transferable Vote) election and, as the name of the electoral system tells us, votes can be transferred. In their poll, LucidTalk also asked respondents about their second preferences in this election, data that should allow us to make an educated guess as to who might be best placed to take the third seat – assuming that the DUP reaches the quota to take the second.

What is immediately clear from the data is that that Alliance is exceptionally well placed to pick up transfers from both Sinn Féin and the Greens. In fact, if this poll were to be replicated in the election, Alliance would receive almost half (42%) of Sinn Féin voters’ second preferences – almost 20 points more than the SDLP would receive. Green voters are even more likely to transfer to Alliance, with 71.3% indicating that Naomi Long would receive their second preference. By way of comparison, Danny Kennedy would only receive 0.3% of Sinn Féin transfers and 2.8% of Green transfers, whilst Colum Eastwood would only receive 23.9% and 5.6% respectively.

This really matters in an election where Sinn Féin are likely to exceed the quota on first preferences and where the Greens appear likely to be eliminated early on. With Eastwood, Kennedy and Long so close on first preferences, Anderson’s surplus alone could be enough to see Naomi Long overtake the UUP’s Danny Kennedy. Naomi Long’s vote tally will then also be bolstered by Bailey’s transfers – and presumably transfers from the largely pro-European independent candidates too – which could be sufficient to see Long overtake Eastwood.

This would be a key moment for the SDLP. If Eastwood is behind Long with Sinn Féin and Green Party transfers already distributed, then it is hard to see where the necessary additional transfers would come from. This poll indicates that only 1.1% of TUV voters will transfer to them – whilst no respondents giving the DUP their first preference intend to do so at all. A lack of transfers at this stage could prove fatal to Colum Eastwood’s chances.

For Danny Kennedy, transfers will also be an issue. Overtaken by Naomi Long as she receives transfers from both Sinn Féin and the Greens, Danny Kennedy will hope to gain transfers from UKIP and the Conservatives – but even then could struggle to overtake Eastwood before the elimination of Jim Allister. This elimination should see Dodds past the quota, followed by a redistribution of her surplus – though this seems unlikely to be enough. The transfers could provide the UUP with enough votes to squeeze past the SDLP but – according to the results of this poll anyway – this will probably be very tight indeed.

Regardless, this poll indicates that Naomi Long will, in all likelihood, end up in the final four. Were she to face Danny Kennedy, as seems marginally more likely, then Long will benefit from 71.8% of Colum Eastwood’s second preferences – with no SDLP respondents intending to transfer to Kennedy – and pass the quota, thus securing the final seat. Should she face Eastwood, it is slightly harder to read as over 75% of Kennedy’s second preferences would go to other candidates – but even here Long has an edge with 20.4% of UUP transfers compared to just 3.4% for Eastwood.

This poll is not necessarily a prediction of the results of the election on 23rdMay, but it offers an important snapshot of the current landscape. With reported first preference support for the UUP, SDLP and Alliance all within the margin of error of each other, we can be safer in predicting that, no matter what, transfers will ultimately decide who takes the third seat. LucidTalk will be conducting another tracker poll later this week; its results will be an important signal of the overall direction of travel.

If the broad findings of today’s poll are replicated next Thursday, then Naomi Long is well placed be elected to the European Parliament, building on the Alliance surge of the local elections. There is, of course, still time for Danny Kennedy and Colum Eastwood to change minds – to at least become more transfer friendly. If Colum Eastwood can persuade more voters to transfer to him before Naomi Long, or if Danny Kennedy can strip away would-be first preference votes from the Conservatives, UKIP or TUV, then the result could be very different. In a highly competitive race, they have a lot of work to do.

More graphs: Where would second preferences go?

Methodology, and more on LucidTalk

The polling referenced in this article was carried out by Belfast based polling and market research company LucidTalk. The project was carried out online over a period of four days from 4th to 7th May 2019. The project targeted the established LucidTalk NI-Wide Opinion Panel (12,047 members) which is balanced by gender, age-group, area of residence, and community background, in order to be demographically representative of Northern Ireland (NI). 1,405 full responses were considered in terms of the final results, and a data auditing process ensured all completed poll-surveys were genuine ‘one-person, one-vote’ responses, and also to ensure a robust NI representative sample of opinion. This weighted dataset was/is a demographically representative sample of Northern Ireland – producing results representative of NI Opinion to within an error of +/-2.6%.