The Assembly election has now actually been called for 7 March. I will, as usual, be running a prediction contest on my elections website, but that will only be launched one we know who all the candidates are, ie 14 February (to allow for all nominations and withdrawals).

In the meantime, I have been tracking the speculation on the likely results so far:

my own initial thoughts, from December 2006

“Fair Deal” of Slugger O’Toole repeats the exercise, with closer examinations of the situation in the four Belfast constituencies, the three Antrim constituencies, Lagan Valley, North Down and Strangford, Upper Bann, South Down, and Newry and Armagh, and the West. See also on Slugger further debate on Lagan Valley, UUP nominations in Strangford, Conservatives in North Down, SDLP in West Tyrone, the PUP after David Ervine’s death, Sinn Fein in Newry and Armagh, the UUP in Foyle, and much more – I wish Slugger would get a decent indexing system, it doesn’t even seem to be searchable by the usual search engines at the moment.

See also on the prospects of the dissident Republicans and ‘Fair Deal’ on the Unionist right, and the surge in registrations.