Has support for nationalist parties in Northern Ireland reached a plateau?

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4IFSc5xK0V3w7d7YVb_5LSrLownWpDXr1R27l5bVPuj5W4FmwFQOdNGhH8MkU6_R-UjrqvcKgpQH1kh0YoB12zneHwPJim2RzxTHj0YOnZechlyybKfAE3LHdGXLP-SUm9KkF019dRv_G/s1600-h/vote.jpeg"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 103px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4IFSc5xK0V3w7d7YVb_5LSrLownWpDXr1R27l5bVPuj5W4FmwFQOdNGhH8MkU6_R-UjrqvcKgpQH1kh0YoB12zneHwPJim2RzxTHj0YOnZechlyybKfAE3LHdGXLP-SUm9KkF019dRv_G/s320/vote.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367228333768024322" //abr /br /This a href="http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/08/06/what-did-the-euros-say-about-the-move-to-nationalism/" article /a on PoliticalBetting.com argues that the vote for nationalist parties (the SDLP and Sinn Fein) in Northern Ireland seems to have reached a plateau. br /br /The article argues that, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Catholic population of Northern Ireland was growing and their willingness to vote was increasing. This culminated in a score for nationalist candidates of 45.4% in the 1999 Euro-elections. However, since then, although there has been some switching from the SDLP to Sinn Fein, there has not been an increase in the overall nationalist vote.br /br /This could be for a number of reasons. One could be that there has been a fall in Catholic turnout - and another could be that more Catholics are voting for non-nationalist parties. Underlying both of these factors is the fact that the national question appears to be less of a pressing question in Northern Ireland now that it was in the Troubles. This has the potential to open the political arena up a bit to class-based or left/right ideologically-based parties.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/38622711-1628804784196142201?l=vinospoliticalblog.blogspot.com'//div

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