Wed, 12:46: RT @jonlis1: So gov will not, after all, deport 3 million people. Great. But there’s no moral superiority in declining to act like Idi Amin…
Wed, 14:34: Home to a future president of Israel, the inventor of Haagen Dazs ice-cream, and founder of Beaverbrooks the jewell… https://t.co/y9K37MbjLd
Perhaps you were going to continue the thread. But as an (ex-) Alliance man, I’m curious as to what you make of their transfers. It seems like their supporters are transferring to nationalists at a higher rate than ever. Not a huge surprise, but the transfer patterns are already giving unionist bloggers a new label for Alliance (nationalist-lite!) Explains where some of that nationalist vote went, although not all. It’s not huge surprise given the antics of the last year.
My question however is, since Alliance vote more or less held up everywhere, and they come from East Belfast and North Down (as well as other parts of Belfast) and yet transfer so heavily to the SDLP does that put to bed the notion that it was ‘nice’ unionists who voted for them. Rather it is mainly the growing number of catholic and Other voters in East Belfast that perhaps have a secondary interest in nationalist politics, if any at all, but still resent all the worst trappings of loyalism.
In other words, as I have argued on blogs before, the 2011 Pottinger performance of both Alliance and SF (and similarly the 2014 Titanic) merely reflected that lots of non-unionists now reside in inner East Belfast and two non-unionists could be elected without a single protestant casting a vote for them.
Perhaps you were going to continue the thread. But as an (ex-) Alliance man, I’m curious as to what you make of their transfers. It seems like their supporters are transferring to nationalists at a higher rate than ever. Not a huge surprise, but the transfer patterns are already giving unionist bloggers a new label for Alliance (nationalist-lite!) Explains where some of that nationalist vote went, although not all. It’s not huge surprise given the antics of the last year.
My question however is, since Alliance vote more or less held up everywhere, and they come from East Belfast and North Down (as well as other parts of Belfast) and yet transfer so heavily to the SDLP does that put to bed the notion that it was ‘nice’ unionists who voted for them. Rather it is mainly the growing number of catholic and Other voters in East Belfast that perhaps have a secondary interest in nationalist politics, if any at all, but still resent all the worst trappings of loyalism.
In other words, as I have argued on blogs before, the 2011 Pottinger performance of both Alliance and SF (and similarly the 2014 Titanic) merely reflected that lots of non-unionists now reside in inner East Belfast and two non-unionists could be elected without a single protestant casting a vote for them.