Scenarios
Possible election scenarios tested by this election study included:
- a thawing (via cross-community voting) of the acute sectarian divide between Protestant-British Unionists and Catholic-Irish nationalists
- electoral divisions between Unionists over entering into government with Sinn Fein, via a strong showing by TUV
- the prospects of Sinn Fein becoming the largest party in Northern Ireland amid such Unionist divisions, with the potential to provide the First Minister by 2011
- movement away from the main ethnic blocs by voters who may support cross-community parties such as Alliance
- further washing-out of the previous structural basis of party choice within Northern Ireland’s ethnic blocs, given the modern ‘respectability’ and ‘de-ghettoisation’ of Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party.
Objectives
The survey attempted:
- continuity in the generation of data which can be used in conjunction with existing longitudinal studies
- comparability with the British Election Survey, whilst also structured upon the particular circumstances pertaining to Northern Ireland
- change assessment: to what extent has a new, innovative political dispensation in Northern Ireland been accompanied by electoral change?
The Survey also wished to:
- analyse the voting behaviour of the Northern Ireland electorate on the occasion of the first domestic region-wide election since the formation of the devolved power-sharing executive in May 2007
- explore whether the sectarian/confessional ethno-religious divide in Northern Ireland is diminishing, increasing or remains static
- assess the level of support for the devolved executive consociation of political representatives of the main ethnic blocs created under the Good Friday Agreement
- analyse the perceptions of voters in terms of the extent of powers that should be devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive
- examine the degree of insecurity felt by the electorate given the ongoing threats posed by 'dissident' republican armed groups
- gauge the priorities of electors as devolution embeds but is confronted by a period of financial restraint
Results
Datasets from the survey have been logged at the ESRC data archive, but are also accessible here:
- ‘Liverpool General Election data file’ (440 Kb SPSS full data file - requires SPSS software to run the file)
- ‘Northern Ireland 2010 Westminster Election ESRC Survey Questionnaire' (full interview questionnaire in pdf, plus details of the sampling methods used)
- ‘ESRC NI 2010 Election Survey’ (basic frequency results in pdf)
Investigators
- Professor Jon Tonge (Department of Politics, University of Liverpool), Principal Investigator
- Professor Bernadette Hayes (Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen)
- Dr Paul Mitchell (Department of Government, LSE)
Advisory Expert Board
- Professor Brendan O’Leary (University of Pennsylvania)
- Professor Ian McAllister (Australian National University)
- Professor Shane O’Neill (Queen’s University, Belfast)
- Professor Yvonne Galligan (Queen’s University, Belfast)
Thanks are also due to Professor Jocelyn Evans (University of Salford) for helpful informal advice.
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