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.



It’s tempting to say that the only argument you need against unionists is ‘tick tock’. It’s so tempting that I’m going to say it. Tick tock, tick tock. But that isn’t enough. There are two points to make here. Firstly, the south, and everyone else, but it really concerns the south here, the south is utterly unprepared for the reality of a successful border poll. You think the Brits failed to prepare for Brexit? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.



The second point was new to me, it came from a fairly young unionist I saw on social media. I say ‘unionist’ but I’m not really sure what to say because she was someone who had lived in Britain, and come back to the north and decided to that she favoured a united Ireland, despite her unionist background, and she had a very interesting point to make.



She spoke about how older unionists were furious with her, and complaining to her that she didn’t know what she was talking about because she didn’t live through the troubles; but she had a good answer for them. She said, yes she didn’t live through the troubles, so that meant her view was clearer. People – unionists – who had lived through the troubles were not being rational because they were still tied up in the fear and emotion of the violence. Younger people who escaped that, she said, were better able to evaluate the arguments on merit.



I thought that was interesting.